Essay Sample on Henry Fayol's Principles in Modern Organizations: Kane's Furniture.

Introduction

I have been the manager of the marketing department of Kane's Furniture for Moe then three years now. Over the last three years, I have come to notice that most of Henry Fayol's principles of leadership are all practiced in this modern organizations. I have seen centralization, unity of direction, unity of command, division of labor, delegation, authority and responsibility, initiatives, equity, and remuneration are practiced.

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As compared to the other two companies such as Walmart and Ikea where the hierarchical and matrix organization structures are implemented respectively, Kane's Furniture has adopted a flat or functional organization structure to review bursary, red tape and improve on the timeliness of decision making and execution. In those companies, wherever I wanted to initiate a project to do any project, I had to wai6t for over one month after ideation to be allowed to present my innovative idea and be funded. Most of the requests had to undergo a lot of scrutiny by each management level before the decision is made. The bureaucracy made people feel frustrated and, in some cases, there were fights between the middle level and low-level managers over red tape and bureaucracy.

Centralization

Kanes Furniture is one of the most successful companies in the industry. The success to distributed to two mean areas, one is the flat organization's design where there is only one senior manager or the CEO, the rest are departmental managers who also double as the leaders. The adoption of the flat organizing structures centralized most powers on the CEO and the department managers. The workers can communicate directly with their department manager or leaders who also report directly to the CEO. With the flat organization structure, the decision is made fast because the red tape and bureaucracy are quite limited. The employees are free to share their new ideas with the management who allocate funds and other resources for research and development. Each department's decision is made without must consultation vertically or horizontally because the CEO has delegated most of the decision-making roles to the department leaders.

With faster decision making comes accountability and responsibly. Authority is only awarded commensurately with the responsibility. once a leader can decide, they are also accountable for their decision. The leaders make a conscious decision with Kanes Furniture's triple bottom line of profit, sustainability, and people by ensuring that their operations are socially responsible. This means that people both internal and external customer's wellbeing is given priority. The central management makes a major decision and ensures that each decision is aligned with Kanes Furniture's core mission and values. The second is a unity of direction and the unity of command. Wirt the central command, the entire company has only one direction or set of objectives towards which it works.

Initiative

The top managements leaderships style was particularly motivating and inspiring. I can confidently say that the manager was a transformational leader because he was genuinely interested in the employee's wellbeing and could often call individual employees to discuss with the personal issues and offer personal perspectives. He was also ready to be corrected because he believed that constructive criticism could drive growth, creativity, and innovation. Additionally, the manager always inspires the employees to seek higher ideals (Edwards, 2018). He often told the employees to be problem solvers and encouraged employees to brainstorm to find a solution encouraging the employees to find a solution that helped the employee in a generative creative solution to solve problems for which he rewarded them. the CEO believed that every employee has a role to play in promoting Kanes Furniture's values and achieving Kanes Furniture's aims and objectives.

The marketing manager himself often reminded the employees that they were employed to solve problems and tried to foster a culture of change to prove to the employees that change was indeed inevitable. On several occasions, to reminded the employees to be ready to test new ideas and implement change (Rahman, 2012). With the change readiness culture, employees were free to propose changes, test new ideas and even got funding for their research and development. Over the years that I have worked there, I have seen new furniture designs created and that got me thinking how effective the management's initiatives can impact Kanes Furniture's bottom-line.

Equity

One of the main advantages of working for Kanes Furniture is competitive compensation. Kanes Furniture's compensation strategy was based on competence, merit, and qualification, not gender or race (Edwards, 2018). Before I joined Kanes Furniture, I had worked for other firms that openly practiced gender bias and in most projects, gender cards played an important role in the selection, assignment, and punishment. Men were better compensated than women and over 90% of the key positions in Kanes Furniture were occupied by the male as opposed to a female that occupied only n10% of the slot. My current employer has an almost equal number of males and females in all departments. Ever pone is employed based on qualification and there are many departments headed by females than men and Kanes Furniture equal opportunity policy is posted at the entrance. I believe this is a major demonstration of Kanes Furniture's commitment to equity.

Conclusion

Even though Henry Fayol published the 14 principles of management, almost all the 14 principles are still practiced today by most of the then-modern companies. Centralization, equality, and initiatives are the most common practices of the 21st century. Most of the organizations allow only a few top managers to decide within the company. The employees in most of the modern gorgonians are engaged in decision making. This means that they can express themselves, propose new ideas and even participate in the formulation of solutions. Finally, the employees in modern-day organizations demand equity in payment and employment. The company for which I work has openly declared their gender policy guiding compensation and employment. The company is an equal opportunity employer with a clear compensation strategy for all employees. Effectiveness is a function of clear authority and discipline in the company.

References

Edwards, R. (2018). An Elaboration of the Administrative Theory of the 14 Principles of Management by Henri Fayol. International Journal for Empirical Education and Research, 12(22), 41-52. https://doi.org/10.35935/edr/21.5241

Rahman, M. (2012). Henry Fayol and Frederick Winslow Taylor's Contribution to Management Thought: An Overview. ABC Journal of Advanced Research, 1(2), 94-103. https://doi.org/10.18034/abcjar.v1i2.10

Wook Yoo, J., Lemak, D., & Choi, Y. (2006). Principles of management and competitive strategies: using Fayol to implement Porter. Journal of Management History, 12(4), 352-368. https://doi.org/10.1108/17511340610692734