Henri Fayol (Istanbul, 29 July 1841 Paris, 19 November 1925) was a French mining

engineer, mining executive, author and director of mines who developed general theory of
business administration that is often called Fayolism.[1] He and his colleagues developed
this theory independently of scientific management but roughly contemporaneously. Like his
contemporary, Frederick Winslow Taylor, he is widely acknowledged as a founder of
modern management methods.
Fayol was born in 1841 in a suburb of Istanbul. His father (an engineer) was in the military
at the time and was appointed superintendent of works to build Galata Bridge, which
bridged the Golden Horn.[1] The family returned to France in 1847, where Fayol graduated
from the mining academy "cole Nationale Suprieure des Mines" in Saint-tienne in 1860.
In 1860 at the age of nineteen Fayol started working at the mining company named
"Compagnie de Commentry-Fourchambault-Decazeville" in Commentry as the mining
engineer. During his time at the mine, he studied the causes of underground fires, how to
prevent them, how to fight them, how to reclaim mining areas that had been burned, and
developed a knowledge of the structure of the basin.[2] In 1888 he was promoted to
managing director. During his time as director, he made changes to improve the working
situations in the mines, such as allowing employees to work in teams, and changing the
division of labor.[2] Later, more mines were added to his duties.
Eventually, the board decided to abandon its iron and steel business and the coal mines.
They chose Henri Fayol to oversee this as the new managing director. Upon receiving the
position, Fayol presented the board with a plan to restore the firm. The board accepted the
proposal.[2] When he retired in 1918, the company was financially strong and one of the
largest industrial combines in Europe
Based largely on his own management experience, he developed his concept of
administration. In 1916 he published these experience in the book "Administration
Industrielle et Gnrale", at about the same time as Frederick Winslow Taylor published
his Principles of Scientific Management.
Fayol's work became more generally known with the 1949 publication of General and
industrial administration,[3] the English translation[4] of the 1916 article "Administration
industrielle et gnrale". In this work Fayol presented his theory of management, known
as Fayolism. Before that Fayol had written several articles on mining engineering, starting in
the 1870s, and some preliminary papers on administration.[5]
Starting in the 1870s, Fayol wrote a series of articles on mining subjects, such as on the
spontaneous heating of coal (1879), the formation of coal beds (1887), the sedimentation of
the Commentry, and on plant fossils (1890),
His first articles were published in the French Bulletin de la Socit de l'Industrie minrale,
and beginning in the early 1880s in the Comptes rendus de l'Acadmie des sciences, the
proceedings of the French Academy of Sciences.
Fayolism
Fayol's work was one of the first comprehensive statements of a general theory of
management.[6] He proposed that there were five primary functions of management and
fourteen principles of management[7]
Functions of Management

1. Planning[8]
2. Organizing
3. Staffing
4. Controlling
5. Directing