Theories of Fayol and Maslow and How they apply to a fictional character and the running of a small business.

Essay by idalilimUniversity, Bachelor'sB, March 2005

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Introduction

This essay illustrates the ideas of Henri Fayol and Abraham Maslow and their application to Suzie's job as a manager. According to Robbins, Bergman, Stagg and Coulter (2003, p.6), a manager is defined as someone who works with and through other people by coordinating their work activities in order to accomplish organizational goals. In this case, Suzie's job as a manager required her to work with and through the supervisor and employees to run the store more effectively. In addition, Suzie also had to motivate her employees to work more efficiently.

Fayol's perspective of the overall success of an organization was to include the formulation of goals, strategies and plans and to work through others to ensure that these activities were implement. These principles also had to be supplemented and supported by discipline and anticipation (Wren, 1995; 2001). Fayol also believed that management could be taught and was concerned about improving the quality of management (Schermerhorn, Campling, Poole and Wiesner, 2004, p.98).

Maslow's theory of motivation, on the other hand, took a more psychological approach, which focused on employee motivation. This theory proposed that within every person lied a hierarchy of five needs - starting with physiological needs and ascending to safety, social, esteem and finally, self-actualization needs. Hence, in order to motivate a person, Maslow stated that lowest level needs must be substantially satisfied before the next level can be activated and so on (Robbins et al., 2003, pp.445-446).

Application of Fayol's Concepts

In order for Suzie to apply Fayol's administrative theory of management, she must understand that the responsibility of general management is to lead the enterprise toward its objective by making effective and efficient use of available resources (Wren, 2001). Fayol identified five functions that are rules of his administrative doctrine. They are namely...