Lack of proper focus has constrained the development of the concepts of the management principles and has perpetuated a situation where most people are still unable to distinguish between managerial and non-managerial work. This brief paper discusses this difficulty, presents an innovative explanation and makes a suggestion of how to improve the preparation of managers.

1. MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES
An Innovative Explanation
André Faizi Alves
May 2014
www.TheScienceAndSpiritOfManagement.com

2. Contents
Introduction................................................................ 3
1. Evolution of Management Theory ........................................ 3
2. Contemporary Vision of Management ..................................... 4
3. A Brief Review of Management Principles ............................... 5
4. Further Clarification ................................................. 7
5. Suggestion ............................................................ 7
References.................................................................. 8
André Faizi Alves | www.TheScienceAndSpiritOfManagement.com

3. Introduction
Lack of proper focus has constrained the development of the concepts of the management
principles and has perpetuated a situation where most people are still unable to distinguish be-tween
managerial and non-managerial work. This brief paper discusses this difficulty, presents
an innovative explanation and makes a suggestion of how to improve the preparation of man-agers.
1. Evolution of Management Theory
Contrary to what one might think, the questions What is management? and What are man-agers
supposed to do? have indeed been difficult to answer, even though the subject of man-agement
has been a concern for centuries. To better understand the reason for this difficulty,
we might start by taking a quick look at how our present knowledge of management principles
was developed.
First, we must remember that management has existed for a long time. Throughout history,
management is easily discernible in major enterprises like pyramids, aqueducts, the coliseum,
wars, and the administration of empires. However, only around the turn of the XIX to the XX
century was Henry Fayol (1841–1925) able to present a solid explanation of the discipline. For
that feat, he is today considered the father of modern management. Although his work was
outstanding, it was perhaps constrained by the level of collective managerial knowledge availa-ble
at the time.
Fayol identified the following five management functions (or “elements”, as he labeled
them):
Briefly, Fayol considered Forecast(ing) to be a cause and Plan(ning) the effect; Organizing a
cause and Coordinating the effect; and Commanding a cause and Controlling the effect.
After Fayol and his contemporaries—the theorists of the Classical School of management—
the following generations did not make a concerted effort to build on the Classical School’s
work. Instead, among other things, the push for practicality and specialization has driven the
development of the discipline away from a concern for its principles and towards a focus on
non-managerial work.
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4. 2. Contemporary Vision of Management
The result is that today we have different adaptations of the functions of management as
described by Fayol, with none offering any significant improvement. In the end, by repeating a
weakness in Fayol’s work, these adaptations also fall short of providing an explanation of the
management cycle that is coherent with the process of creating and maintaining the existence
of organizations as organic systems.
The following is the most popular adaptation of the management functions:
Notes:
· Forecasting has been merged with Planning
· Coordinating and Commanding have been replaced by Leading (or Directing)
· Staffing is sometimes presented as a fifth function
Concomitantly, a lack of enlightenment and/or accuracy can also be observed in the defini-tions
of management, as seen in some of the following popular examples:
· “To manage is to forecast and to plan, to organise, to command, to co-ordinate and to
control.” (Henri Fayol)
· “Management is the art of getting things done through people.” (Attributed to Mary
Parker Follet) Note: “through people” seems to be a deviation from Follet’s thinking. “With people”
seems more consistent with her work.
· Management “…is a multi-purpose organ that manages a business and manages manag-ers
and manages workers and work.” (Peter Drucker)
Such attempts to define and explain management seem to have lead people like Elliot
Jaques (1998) to declare that “despite massive efforts by organization(s) and social science ex-perts,
only the merest beginnings of an organization and management science have shown
through”. Elliot goes on to point out that “the pile of ill-defined terms that litter the field” “is a
major obstacle that stands in the way of development for Management, Leadership and Organ-izational
Development”. Fayol (republished 2013) raised a similar concern when he said, “… the
term Management with somewhat ill-defined attributes and frontiers”.
It is of little wonder, then, that today most managers are not capable of providing a defini-tion
of their profession or explaining what managerial work really entails.
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5. 3. A Brief Review of Management Principles
Perhaps the first step in the process of understanding management should be a look at how
management came into being. Management is a function of the division of work. With the ad-vent
of and subsequent increase in the complexity of the division of labor, a special occupation
became necessary to assist the divided work to function as a unit. The second step should be
the consideration of this fact in light of human reality, particularly in view of the concepts of
humans as social beings and, consequently, organizations as social systems.
Concerning the second point, it is important to remember that a system is a group of inter-connected
elements that contribute to and benefit from the whole. This means that for a sys-tem
to exist, it must have elements, structure, and processes. More precisely, elements must
be arranged in a specific structure that enables processes to take place. Furthermore, for social
systems to be healthy, they must allow the unifying power of justice to manifest itself.
This paradigm allows for a better definition of management and for an explanation of what
management is supposed to do. Since management is a function of the division of labor, and an
organization is an organic social system, which requires justice for a healthy existence, man-agement
can be defined as the endeavor of facilitating the collective production of deliverables.
With this framework in mind, it is easier to move on to explore what management is sup-posed
to do. One of the central points of the explanation then becomes the linkage of the core
management functions* to different characteristics of a system—that is, to elements, structure,
and processes. By linking these, it is possible to provide a coherent explanation of how man-agement
facilitates the creation and functioning of organizations as organic social systems.
(*Note: these functions are part of a model that has three groups of functions: Leadership, Core
and Complementary.)
The core management functions relate to the above-mentioned characteristics of a system
as follows:
· Planning – concerned with the design of a system
· Provisioning - concerned with elements (Personnel and Resources—tangibles /
intangibles)
· Organizing – concerned with structure and the "transformation" phase of a pro-cess
· Coordinating – concerned with the "transfer" phase of a process
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6. We might say that a process is a sustained phenomenon marked by a series of changes that
succeed one another in a relatively fixed way and lead toward a particular end or result. In an
organization, then, a process can be seen as a “whole”, made up of a concatenation of at least
two distinctive phases that alternate with each other: transformation and transfer. Hence, we
have:
Concerning the role of justice in social systems, one needs to consider that “at the group
level …justice is the practical expression of awareness that, in the achievement of human pro-gress,
the interests of the individual and those of society are inextricably linked”. (Bahá’í Inter-national
Community - The Prosperity of Humankind)
Thus, the subject of management must be approached with the notion that a manager is
one of many components that must work in harmony to allow for the existence of healthy or-ganizations.
This means that although his or her work needs to be carried out from distinctive
hierarchical positions in the organizational structure, this does not excuse managers from an
“ethic of reciprocity and balance” called for by the principle of “unity in diversity”.
A sustainable social order is distinguished, among other things, by an ethic of reci-procity
and balance at all levels of human organization. A relevant analogy is the human
body: here, millions of cells collaborate to make human life possible. The astounding di-versity
of form and function connects them in a lifelong process of giving and receiving.
It represents the highest expression of unity in diversity. Within such an order, the con-cept
of justice is embodied in the recognition that the interests of the individual and of
the wider community are inextricably linked. The pursuit of justice within the frame of
unity (in diversity) provides a guide for collective deliberation and decision-making and
offers a means by which unified thought and action can be achieved.
Bahá’í International Community, Rethinking Prosperity:
Forging Alternatives to a Culture of Consumerism.
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7. 4. Further Clarification
In order to make the discipline of management more understandable, it is also necessary to
address the haziness created by many management ideas (literature) that are not categorized
in a way that makes them easily relatable to management functions.
These ideas could be categorized as follow:
Category Relation to Management Functions
Management
Tools
Instruments that contribute to the execution of management functions
Examples: Personal Schedule, Manuals, Reports, Cash Flow
Management
Programs
Customized methods for carrying out part, one, or several management functions
Examples: Budget Management, Change Management, Project Management
Managers’
Functional Areas
of Expertise
Specialized areas of collective production, often with a sufficient number of per-sonnel
and complexity of processes to accommodate individuals or teams dedi-cated
exclusively to managerial work
Examples: Operations, Finance, Human Resources, IT, Marketing
Influencing and be influenced by the above issue is the problem that most current man-agement
courses are designed with focus on single functional areas. Aside from the non-managerial
work knowledge that characterizes each area, these courses do bundle in some
management programs, tools, and other concepts. However, the focus is always on the non-managerial
work required by the area, and there is little or no clarity about how the imparted
knowledge relates to management functions. For example, although at some point the mana-gerial
knowledge of Planning and Organizing has to intersect with the non-managerial
knowledge of double entry and web design, for good management of the respective areas of
finance and IT, the latter non-managerial knowledge is primarily required by individuals (non-managers)
who are directly* involved with the collective production of deliverables. As a result,
it is common for students to leave these courses without a clear understanding of where non-managerial
work ends and managerial work begins.
5. Suggestion
Managers might be better prepared if management courses were redesigned so that half of
the study were centered on managers and the work that they are supposed to do, and the oth-er
half were based on a combination of non-managerial work and managerial work customized
to particular functional areas, industries, purposes, and so forth. For example, an undergradu-ate
degree program could focus its teaching on (“pure”) management, while subsequent grad-uate
degree programs would teach a combination of non-managerial work and managerial
work specific to particular functional areas, such as Operations, Marketing, or Finance.
André Faizi Alves | www.TheScienceAndSpiritOfManagement.com Page 7

8. References
Henri Fayol. General and Industrial Management. Translated from the French Edition (Dunod) by Con-stance
Storrs. Martino Publishing, 2013. Print.
Peter Drucker. The Practice of Management. HaperBusiness, Reissue edition 2006. Print.
Elliott Jaques. Requisite Organization: a total system for effective managerial organization and manage-rial
leadership for the 21st century. Cason Hall & Co Pub, 1998. Print.
Bahá’í International Community. The Prosperity of Humankind. 1995. Statement Library.
http://statements.bahai.org/95-0303.htm
Bahá’í International Community. Rethinking Prosperity: Forging Alternatives to a Culture of Consumer-ism.
Contribution to the 18th Session of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development.
http://www.bic.org/statements/rethinking-prosperity-forging-alternatives-culture-consumerism
André Faizi Alves. The Science and Spirit of Management. Verba Publications, 2014. Print.
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