Exploring the Interconnection: Fayol's and Mintzberg’s Management Theories

tions and Mintzberg’s management roles instead represent different but logically connected ‘ontological layers of management’ (Lamond, 1997, p.8). Mintzberg and his colleagues have filled in the details of the practical manifestations of Fayol’s more abstract functions (Hales, 1993, p.13). What Mintzberg’s theory does is provide some of the empirical support that helps to find the link between managerial functions and managerial behaviour (Lamond, 1997, p.8). Consequently, it is of the writer’s opinion that instead of Mintzberg being more accurate in his definition of management, he has instead, built on the idea that Fayol formally proposed. This doesn’t necessarily undermine Mintzberg’s work; as Hales said, ‘if all philosophy is a set of

In the study Managerial Style Measure, 523 respondents were studied, which is a more detailed study than both Mintzberg and Fayol took (Lamond, 2004, p.338). The managers answered that the managerial behaviours they were mostly likely to enact were ‘focusing on the immediate situation and goals and results’. This is consistent with Mintzberg’s catalogue of observed behaviour in which his set of managers engaged (Lamond, 2004, p.351). Thus this demonstrates that Mintzberg’s roles can be supported even when faced with more comprehensive research than just his five CEOs; there must be truth in what he concluded. The coherence of his work can also be seen through James Harter’s and Amy Adkins’ article What Great Managers Do To Engage Employees (2015), in the way they outline a great manager as having to ‘communicate richly”, ‘focus on strength over weaknesses’ and ‘base performance management on clear goals’ This clearly relates to Mintzberg’s roles of ‘figurehead’, ‘leader’ and ‘monitor’. Whilst this does provide evidence of some of Mintzberg’s successes, it is not conclusive nor persuasive enough to make the author conclude that Mintzberg is more “right” than

Mintzberg has frequently been praised for providing an overview of what management should not be, but his argument could be said to be lacking in detail regarding how to actually be a good manager (Witzel, 2003, p.223). In order to provide a better description a clearer understanding of what management is it would have been more useful for him to outline a profile on what a good manager consists of as opposed to what a good manager should avoid. However, it could be argued that these two principles are not actually separate; instead they are interdependent. This thus makes it near impossible to differentiate between the two (Witzel, 2003, p.223.) Perhaps to understand what a good manager should be, we have to first understand what they are not. This undermines the initial criticism of Mintzberg, and therefore it is of the author’s opinion that does not invalidate Mintzberg’s argument. Mintzberg doesn’t claim to have a prescription for management as he views it as an ‘art and not a science’, and ‘art is not prescriptive’ (Witzel, 2003, p.223). But he does however, express his knowledge of what managers need to and what abilities they require. So although Mintzberg may not be entirely conclusive in providing his readers with what good management is, he does tell