Chapter 6: Principles of Management

Every organisation settles the same set of questions. How the total work is to be divided, whom an employee takes orders from, what is paid and on what basis, and whether decisions are taken at the top or lower down. A manager who settles each of these afresh in every situation works by trial and error, and repeats mistakes others have already made and corrected. Management does not leave these questions to be settled afresh. It draws on a body of tested general statements that grew out of close observation of working factories and offices and out of the recorded experience of practising managers. Two of them shaped what is studied here: F.W. Taylor, who examined work on the shop floor, and Henri Fayol, who examined it from the manager’s chair. Such a statement is not a law of physics. It sets out a relationship between a cause and its effect, guides a manager’s judgement rather than replacing it, and has to be adapted to the situation in which it is applied. This chapter covers the meaning, nature and need for principles of management, the principles laid down by Taylor and by Fayol, their relevance today, and the comparison between the two.

Figure

Fig. 6.0-1 — Managers Reviewing A Work Schedule Photograph of a small group of managers standing around a work schedule displayed on a board in a factory office.

6.1 Meaning and Nature of Principles of Management

A manager decides how work will be shared, who will answer to whom, how much will be paid and how closely subordinates will be supervised. These decisions come up again and again, in every kind of organisation. Management met this by building up a set of general statements, drawn from practice, that tell a manager what result an action is likely to produce.

Those statements are the principles of management. They are the starting point of the whole study of management, because every function a manager performs is carried out in the light of them.

6.1.1 What a Principle of Management Means

A principle is a fundamental statement of truth that guides thought and action. Its usefulness lies in the fact that it links a cause with an effect. The law of demand in Economics is a statement of this kind: it holds that when the price of a commodity falls, the quantity demanded is likely to rise. Anyone who knows the law can say in advance what a fall in price will tend to do.

Principles of management work in the same way, but in the field of managerial action. They explain the relationship between two or more variables in a working organisation, and so provide guidelines for managerial decision-making. A manager who knows that placing a worker under two superiors produces confusion and divided loyalty does not have to discover this by allowing it to happen.

Because these principles connect an action with its likely result, they are useful in predicting and understanding the outcome of managerial decisions. This is the whole reason for stating them formally rather than leaving them to individual experience.

Definition

Principles of Management Principles of management are general statements of fundamental truth which explain the relationship between two or more variables in a managerial situation, establish a cause and effect relationship, and serve as guidelines for managerial decision-making and action.

6.1.2 How Principles of Management Are Derived

Principles of management were not deduced from theory and then applied to business. They grew the other way round, out of what managers actually did and what followed from it. This origin explains both their strength and their limitation: they carry the authority of accumulated experience, but not the exactness of a laboratory law.

Two methods have produced them.

Observation method — managers and researchers observe events as they occur in actual working conditions, analyse what recurs, and record which course of action produced which result. The experience so gained is used afterwards as a guide. Fayol’s principles came out of a lifetime spent managing a mining company in this way.
Experiment method — researchers in the field of management conduct empirical studies in organisations, changing one element of the work and observing the effect of that change. Principles developed from such studies are then tested for validity in other situations. Taylor’s studies of work on the shop floor, in which the tools and the method of doing a job were altered and the output measured, belong to this method.

6.1.3 Nature of Principles of Management

The way principles of management are derived decides what they are like in use. Their main characteristics are given below.

Universal application — the principles apply to organisations of every kind, whether a business firm, a government department, a hospital, a school or an army unit. The reason is that the basic managerial task is the same everywhere: obtaining results through the coordinated effort of people and the proper use of physical resources.
General guidelines — they indicate the direction in which a manager should move, not the exact step to be taken. Since no two managerial situations are identical, a detailed instruction would fit one case and fail in the next, and so the principles are deliberately stated in broad terms.
Flexible — a principle may be modified, and its degree of application varied, to suit the needs of the organisation and the changes taking place around it. Fayol himself held that a principle is seldom applied twice in exactly the same conditions and that allowance must be made for changing circumstances.
Directed at human behaviour — management is a social science and works through people. Human behaviour is complex, and it cannot be isolated and tested in the way a physical reaction can, so the principles are general statements about how people at work are likely to respond.
Contingent — the principles are relative and not absolute. What is a fair rate of pay, or how much authority may safely be passed down, depends on the size of the firm, the nature of its work and the conditions prevailing at the time.
Cause and effect relationship — each principle states that a particular managerial action tends to produce a particular result. It is this link that allows a manager to anticipate the consequences of a decision instead of discovering them afterwards.
Equal importance — no principle stands above the rest. Each deals with a different aspect of the manager’s task, and neglect of any one weakens the working of the others; sound division of work, for instance, achieves little where the pay is felt to be unfair.

Business Example

The Same Principles Outside Business Unity of command and the scalar chain are followed as strictly in the armed forces and in government departments as in a manufacturing firm. The organisation differs, the objective differs, but the need for clear lines of authority and orderly communication does not.

Not As Exact As A Science

Because the principles work through people, they cannot claim the precision of the principles of physics or chemistry. A chemical reaction repeats itself exactly whenever the conditions are repeated; two employees given the same instruction may respond quite differently. The main points of difference are set out in Table 6.1.

Table

This does not make the principles unreliable. It means that a principle is a guide to a manager’s judgement and not a substitute for it, and that its value depends on how sensibly it is applied.

Figure

Fig. 6.1-1 — Work Divided In A Hospital Ward Photograph of a hospital nursing station with doctors and nurses each attending to a separate task.

6.2 Need for Principles of Management

If principles of management did not exist, every manager would begin where the first manager began. Each would work out for himself how much work one person can be given, how far authority may be passed down and what happens when two superiors issue orders to the same subordinate, and each would learn it at the cost of the organisation.

Principles prevent that waste by turning the experience of many managers into knowledge that can be stated, taught and used by others. The reasons they are needed are given below.

To increase efficiency — the principles have been drawn from the experience of a large number of managers over a long period. A manager who applies them reaches a workable course of action directly, without spending time and effort on trial and error, and avoids mistakes that have already been made and paid for elsewhere.
To crystallise the true nature of management — an organised body of principles is what makes it possible to describe and analyse what management actually is. In their absence management would remain a matter of personal skill, and could not have developed into a systematic body of knowledge.
To train managers — formal training in institutes and universities is possible only where there is something definite to teach. Principles and concepts provide that conceptual framework; without them the training of a manager would depend entirely on putting him on the job and letting him learn from his own errors.
To improve research — settled principles give researchers a point from which to start. They can be tested in fresh situations, refined, or shown to need modification, so that each study builds on what is already established instead of beginning afresh.
To attain social goals — the principles guide managers towards the optimum use of scarce human and material resources. Waste is reduced, goods of good quality become available at reasonable prices, and the effort of individuals is directed towards results that serve the community as well as the firm.
To clarify thinking — a principle tells a manager which factors matter in a particular decision and what each of them tends to produce. A manager who is new to a problem is therefore able to think through it in an orderly sequence rather than react to whatever is most immediate.
To spread knowledge — because the principles are stated in general terms and are not tied to one firm, they can be written down, taught and carried across industries and countries. What one organisation learns becomes available to organisations that have never faced the situation.
To evaluate managerial behaviour — the principles indicate what ought to be done in a given situation. They therefore supply a standard against which the actual decisions and conduct of a manager can be judged, both by the organisation and by the manager himself.

Business Example

Experience Turned Into A Course Management institutes and university departments of commerce in India teach Taylor’s and Fayol’s principles more than a hundred years after they were framed. A student who has never worked in a factory begins a career already knowing what the two men spent their working lives finding out.

What The Eight Reasons Have In Common

Each of these reasons rests on the same thing. Managerial experience, left with the individual manager, dies with his career; stated as a principle, it becomes transferable. This is why principles of management are needed even by managers who are already experienced, and why an organisation is judged partly by how far its practice is guided by them.

6.3 Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management

6.3.1 Meaning of Scientific Management

In the workshops of the late nineteenth century each worker did a job in the way he had been taught or had picked up. Tools differed from bench to bench, the day’s output was fixed by custom rather than by study, and neither the worker nor the foreman could say which method was the best one. Alongside this ran a settled belief on both sides that whatever management gained, the worker lost.

F.W. Taylor, an American engineer, treated both of these as problems that could be investigated. He was the first to apply the methods of science — observation, measurement and experiment — to the work of the shop floor, examining how a job was actually done, timing each element of it and testing whether another method gave a better result. Because of this he is known as the father of scientific management.

Scientific management therefore means replacing guesswork, custom and personal opinion with investigation and tested method in everything relating to work, and securing the willing cooperation of workers in the method so arrived at.

Definition

Scientific Management Scientific management means knowing exactly what work is to be done and then seeing that it is done in the best and cheapest way. It substitutes exact investigation and knowledge for individual judgement or opinion in all matters relating to the work done. — F.W. Taylor

6.3.2 The Five Principles of Scientific Management

Taylor set out his conclusions as a small number of principles. The first deals with the method of work, the next three with the relationship between management and workers, and the last with the worker himself. They are named in FC 6.1.

Flowchart

FC 6.1 — Taylor’s Principles Of Scientific Management Principles of scientific management → Science not rule of thumb, Harmony not discord, Cooperation not individualism, Maximum not restricted output, Development of each person to his or her greatest efficiency and prosperity

Science, not rule of thumb — every job, and the method of doing it, should rest on study and analysis and not on custom or on the habit of the individual worker. Where each worker follows his own method there is no way of knowing which method is best, and therefore no way of improving on it. Taylor accordingly held that the task should be planned scientifically, that the materials, tools, equipment and working conditions should be standardised, and that the amount of work to be done in a day should be settled by objective study rather than by guess.
Harmony, not discord — there should be healthy cooperation between the employer and the employees in place of the conflict that scientific management found in most workshops. Taylor argued that this required a mental revolution, that is, a complete change of attitude on both sides: management giving up the view that workers must be driven, and sharing the gains of higher productivity with them; workers giving up the view that management gains only at their expense, and working with discipline and loyalty. Without this change of attitude, the techniques of scientific management cannot hold.
Cooperation, not individualism — management and workers must work as partners rather than compete over the division of what is produced. Taylor’s chief device for this was the separation of planning from doing: management takes responsibility for planning the work, fixing the method and providing the means, while the worker concentrates on performing it. Each side is then doing the part it is better placed to do, and workers’ suggestions for improvement are to be invited rather than resisted.
Maximum, not restricted output — the quarrel between management and workers arises mainly over the division of the surplus. Taylor’s answer was that restricting output, whether to protect jobs or to hold up wage rates, only makes the amount available for division smaller. Both sides gain more by enlarging the surplus, because each then receives a larger share of a larger total, and both therefore have a common interest in raising productivity.
Development of each person to his or her greatest efficiency and prosperity — workers should be selected scientifically, in the light of what the job actually requires, and then trained in the method laid down for it. A worker placed in work suited to his capacity and trained to perform it well produces more, earns more and develops his own potential; the organisation gains at the same time, which is why Taylor treated selection and training as a duty of management rather than a favour to the worker.

How The Five Fit Together

The five principles are not independent remedies. The first supplies the method, the next three supply the relationship in which that method can be worked, and the fifth supplies the person fit to work it. A firm that standardises its methods but leaves the old suspicion between management and workers untouched has applied one principle and defeated the rest.

Business Example

Standard Times On The Assembly Line On a modern automobile assembly line the seconds allowed for each operation are arrived at by study, and the tools, their positions and the sequence of movements are laid down for every station. Taylor’s first principle is in daily use in plants that have never heard of him.

Figure

Fig. 6.3-1 — A Standardised Workstation Photograph of a factory workbench with tools held in fixed marked positions and a printed work sequence displayed above it.

6.4 Fayol’s Principles of Management

6.4.1 Fayol’s Approach to Management

Henri Fayol was a French mining engineer who joined a mining and metallurgical company as a young man and rose to become its managing director. He wrote from the top of the organisation, not from the shop floor, and the questions that occupied him were of a different kind from Taylor’s: how the whole enterprise should be arranged, and what a manager at any level ought to do.

Fayol grouped the activities of a business into six kinds — technical, commercial, financial, security, accounting and managerial. Of these, he observed, only the managerial had no body of teaching behind it. An engineer could be trained in technical work and an accountant in accounting, but a person promoted to management was left to find his own way. His principles were framed to fill that gap.

He set out his ideas in Administration Industrielle et Générale, published in French in 1916 and later translated into English as General and Industrial Management. Fayol was careful to say that the principles are not absolute; they are guidelines to be used in the light of changing and special conditions.

6.4.2 The Fourteen Principles

Fayol stated fourteen principles of management. They are given below in the order in which he set them out.

Division of work — the total task of the organisation is divided into compact jobs and each job is allotted to a different person, so that an employee concentrates on one type of work. Doing the same work repeatedly brings speed and accuracy, and the time and effort lost in shifting from one kind of work to another is saved. The principle applies to managerial work as much as to technical work.
Authority and responsibility — authority is the right to get work done by others; responsibility is the obligation to perform the task assigned. The two must go together. Authority given without responsibility invites its careless use, and responsibility placed on a person who has not been given the necessary authority makes him ineffective. There must therefore be parity between them.
Discipline — discipline means obedience, respect for authority and observance of the rules and agreements that the organisation has settled. No organisation can work if its own arrangements are ignored at will. Fayol held that discipline depends on good supervision at all levels, on rules that are clear and fair, and on penalties that are known in advance and applied without partiality.
Unity of command — an employee should receive orders from one superior only and should be accountable to that superior alone. Where a subordinate has two bosses, instructions overlap, authority is undermined, discipline weakens, loyalty is divided and responsibility for a failure cannot be fixed on anyone.
Unity of direction — there should be one head and one plan for a group of activities having the same objective. Without it the efforts of a department pull in different directions, and coordination between them becomes impossible however willing the individuals may be.
Subordination of individual interest to general interest — the interest of the organisation must prevail over the personal interest of any member of it, since the organisation exists for a purpose larger than that of any individual. Managers must set the example themselves, and must be firm but reasonable in dealing with subordinates, because the temptation to serve a personal interest at the organisation’s cost is constant.
Remuneration — the pay of employees must be fair, reasonable and satisfactory both to them and to the employer. Employees who believe they are underpaid will not give their best however sound the other arrangements are, and pay the firm cannot sustain will not last. Both the amount of remuneration and the method of payment have to be considered.
Centralisation — everything that increases the importance of the subordinate’s role is decentralisation and everything that reduces it is centralisation. Fayol treated this as a matter of proportion rather than of choice between two extremes: the right degree depends on the size of the firm, the competence of the subordinates and the circumstances of the particular case.
Scalar chain — this is the chain of superiors running from the ultimate authority at the top to the lowest rank at the bottom. Communication should normally travel along it, so that no superior is passed over and responsibility can be traced at every step.
Order — there must be material order and social order in an enterprise. Material order means a proper place for everything and everything in its right place; social order means a place for everyone and everyone in his appointed place. Its violation causes confusion, waste of resources and an increase in the cost of operations.
Equity — employees should be treated with justice and kindness, and no discrimination should be made between one and another. Nepotism and favouritism are injurious to motivation and morale, because an employee who sees that results do not decide his treatment has little reason to produce them.
Stability of tenure — it takes time to learn a job and to become good at it, so a reasonable security of service should be provided to employees. Stability of tenure develops loyalty and attachment, while unnecessary labour turnover raises the cost of selection and training and damages the standing of the firm as an employer.
Initiative — employees at every level should be encouraged to think out a plan and to carry it through. Initiative is a source of strength to an organisation and a powerful motivator for the person exercising it; where it is suppressed, the ideas of those closest to the work are lost.
Esprit de corps — there must be team spirit and cooperation among the members of an organisation, because the combined effort of a group achieves more than the sum of what its members would achieve separately. Fayol advised managers to build it by talking to their people rather than relying on written communication, and by taking care never to divide employees against one another.

Definition

Unity of Command Unity of command means that an employee should receive orders from one superior only and be accountable to that superior alone. Fayol held that where two superiors exercise authority over the same person, uneasiness makes itself felt at once.

Unity Of Command And Unity Of Direction

These two are the pair most often confused, because both use the word unity and both are about avoiding conflicting effort. They deal, however, with different things: one with the person receiving orders, the other with the activities being directed. The difference is set out in Table 6.2.

Table

Unity of direction does not by itself bring about unity of command, though unity of command cannot exist where unity of direction is absent.

6.4.3 Scalar Chain and the Gang Plank

The scalar chain can be pictured as a double ladder, with the ultimate authority at the top and the lowest ranks at the two ends. A message travelling from one end to the other passes up one side of the ladder and down the other. The arrangement is shown in FC 6.2.

Flowchart

FC 6.2 — Scalar Chain And The Gang Plank A, the ultimate authority → B → C → D → E → F, the lowest rank on one side; A, the ultimate authority → I → J → K → L → M, the lowest rank on the other side; gang plank → direct contact between F and M, each afterwards informing his own superior

Following the chain strictly protects authority, but it costs time. If F needs an answer from M on a routine matter, the message must climb five steps and descend five more, and the same distance again for the reply. Fayol therefore permitted a gang plank, a direct contact between two persons at the same level in different branches of the chain, to be used where delay would be damaging.

Two conditions attach to it. The gang plank should not become normal practice, because habitual use of it undermines the established lines of authority; and both persons must inform their respective superiors of what has passed between them, so that responsibility is not lost. The device is worth noticing for a further reason: a principle that provides for its own relaxation is a general guideline, not a hard and fast law.

Definition

Gang Plank A gang plank is a direct contact permitted between two employees at the same level in different branches of the scalar chain, used to avoid delay in communication, with both employees informing their superiors afterwards.

Case Snippet

Case 6.1 — Two Sets Of Instructions Ravi Metalworks has appointed Kiran as an operator in its press shop. The production supervisor has instructed her to keep the machine running until the day’s target is met, while the maintenance supervisor has instructed her to stop it every second hour for checking. Kiran has begun holding up work while she decides which instruction to follow, and neither supervisor accepts responsibility for the delay. Q. Name the principle of management being violated here and state two adverse effects of the violation that the case shows.

Business Example

Suggestion Schemes And Initiative Many manufacturing firms in India run employee suggestion schemes, under which a worker may propose a change in the method, layout or tooling of his own operation, and is recognised or rewarded when the proposal is adopted. The practice is Fayol’s principle of initiative given an institutional form.

6.5 Relevance of the Principles Today

Taylor and Fayol wrote about workshops and mines at a time when most employees were unskilled, communication travelled on paper, and a large firm was one that operated in a single country. A student is entitled to ask whether statements framed in those conditions have anything to say to a software company or a bank.

Why The Principles Have Lasted

They have lasted because the conditions that produced them have not gone away. Work still has to be divided among people, someone still has to answer for the result, employees still have to be paid on some basis, and effort spread across many people still has to be pulled towards one objective. Technology has changed how these things are done; it has not removed the need to do them.

What has changed is the setting in which the principles are applied. Employees today are better educated and expect to be consulted rather than instructed. Firms are larger and spread across countries, so authority has to be pushed further down. Electronic communication reaches every level at once, which weakens the older reliance on a strict chain. Competition is sharper, which makes speed of decision matter more than tidiness of procedure.

Relevance And Modification, Principle By Principle

The result is that almost every principle remains relevant, but few are applied exactly as stated. The position is set out in Table 6.3.

Table

Taylor’s principles have travelled in the same way. Standardised methods, measured work and planned tasks are ordinary practice in manufacturing and increasingly in service work; the mental revolution he asked for is what a firm attempts when it shares productivity gains with its employees.

The Limit Of Relevance

Two cautions belong here. The first is that a principle abandoned is not the same as a principle modified: a firm that allows two reporting lines has adapted unity of command, but a firm in which nobody knows who answers for a failure has simply given it up. The second is that the departure has to be deliberate and its cost recognised, since every relaxation buys something and gives up something.

Business Example

Electronic Mail And The Scalar Chain In most organisations an employee can now write directly to a senior manager several levels above him. The convenience is obvious, and so is the difficulty: the immediate superior may be left unaware of a matter for which he is answerable. Firms meet this by requiring that he be marked on the message.

Case Snippet

Case 6.2 — Two Heads, One Designer Sanchit works as a designer at Meridian Systems. For technical standards and appraisal he reports to the head of the design department, and for day-to-day work on the client assignment he is attached to he reports to the project leader. The arrangement is deliberate and is set out in writing, and each head knows what the other may ask of Sanchit. Q. State which principle of management has been departed from here, and explain why the departure need not lead to the adverse effects usually associated with it.

6.6 Comparison of Taylor and Fayol

Taylor and Fayol worked in the same period, on the same problem, without knowing much of each other’s work. Both asked how an organisation could be made to produce more from what it had. They approached the question from opposite ends of the enterprise, and that single difference accounts for most of the others.

What The Two Had In Common

Both aimed at raising efficiency, and both believed that the way to raise it was to replace habit and guesswork with method. Both worked from practice rather than from theory, Taylor from his experiments on the shop floor and Fayol from a working life spent managing a large company. Both held that their conclusions applied to organisations of every kind, and both insisted that the statements they arrived at were general guidelines rather than rigid rules. Each also placed the relationship between management and employees at the centre: Taylor asked for a mental revolution on both sides, Fayol for equity, initiative and esprit de corps.

Where They Differ

The differences follow from where each man stood. They are set out in Table 6.4.

Table

Complementary, Not Opposed

The two bodies of work are often set against each other, but they do not conflict. An organisation whose work has been studied and standardised will still fail if authority is unclear and pay is felt to be unfair; an organisation with sound reporting lines and fair treatment will still lose money if its work is done by rule of thumb. Taylor supplies the method by which work is done, Fayol the framework within which people doing it are organised, and a well-run firm needs both.

Business Example

Both At Work In One Plant In a food-processing plant the time and method for each operation on the line are fixed by study, which is Taylor’s contribution. The same plant has an organisation chart showing who reports to whom, a department heading each function and a single plan for each of them, which is Fayol’s.

6.7 Summary

A principle of management is a general statement of fundamental truth which links a cause with its effect in a managerial situation and serves as a guideline for managerial decision-making and action.
Principles of management were drawn from practice, not from theory, by two methods:

Observation of events in actual working conditions.
Experiment, in which a change is made in the work and its effect is measured and tested.

The nature of these principles follows from that origin: they are universal in application, general guidelines rather than detailed instructions, flexible, directed at human behaviour, contingent on the prevailing situation, based on a cause and effect relationship, and equally important.
Because they work through people, they are less exact than the principles of pure science: they are tested in working organisations where conditions cannot be controlled, are modified to suit the situation, and predict a result only broadly.
Principles of management are needed to increase efficiency, to crystallise the true nature of management, to train managers, to improve research, to attain social goals, to clarify thinking, to spread knowledge and to evaluate managerial behaviour. Each reason rests on the same thing: a principle converts the experience of one manager into knowledge others can use.
Scientific management, developed by F.W. Taylor, means knowing exactly what work is to be done and seeing that it is done in the best and cheapest way, replacing custom and personal opinion with investigation and tested method.
Taylor’s principles are science not rule of thumb; harmony not discord; cooperation not individualism; maximum not restricted output; and development of each person to his or her greatest efficiency and prosperity. Standardisation belongs to the first, the mental revolution to the second, and the separation of planning from doing to the third.
Henri Fayol grouped business activities into technical, commercial, financial, security, accounting and managerial, and framed fourteen principles to fill the gap in the last of these, which alone had no body of teaching behind it.
Fayol’s fourteen principles are named in FC 6.3. Unity of command concerns the person receiving orders and unity of direction the grouping of activities; the two are distinct.
The scalar chain runs from the ultimate authority to the lowest rank, and communication normally travels along it. A gang plank permits direct contact between two persons at the same level in different branches, provided it does not become normal practice and both inform their superiors.
The principles remain relevant today because work must still be divided, answered for, paid for and coordinated. Their application has been modified by better educated employees, larger and more widely spread firms, electronic communication and sharper competition. A principle modified is not a principle abandoned.
Taylor and Fayol both aimed at efficiency, both worked from practice and both treated their conclusions as general guidelines. Taylor worked upward from the shop floor and studied the productivity of the worker; Fayol worked downward from the top and studied the administration of the whole enterprise. Their work is complementary rather than opposed.

Flowchart

FC 6.3 — The Principles Covered In This Chapter Principles of management → Taylor’s principles of scientific management, Fayol’s principles of management; Taylor’s → science not rule of thumb, harmony not discord, cooperation not individualism, maximum not restricted output, development of each person to his or her greatest efficiency and prosperity; Fayol’s → division of work, authority and responsibility, discipline, unity of command, unity of direction, subordination of individual interest to general interest, remuneration, centralisation, scalar chain, order, equity, stability of tenure, initiative, esprit de corps

6.8 Points to Ponder

Taylor separated planning from doing on the ground that each side would then concentrate on what it was better placed to do. In work where the person performing a task understands it better than anyone above him, does that separation still improve efficiency, or does it waste the knowledge of the person closest to the work?
Unity of command is now relaxed in project and matrix arrangements, where an employee answers to two heads. What must an organisation settle in advance before such a relaxation is safe, and at what point does a modified principle become an abandoned one?
Fayol treated centralisation as a matter of degree rather than a choice between two extremes. What considerations should decide how far authority is pushed down in a firm whose branches are spread across several states, and what is given up at each step?
Stability of tenure is said to serve the employer as much as the employee. Where the work of a firm changes rapidly, is a long attachment to one job an asset or an obstacle? Both positions can be defended.
Principles of management are described as universal, yet their application is admitted to vary from one country and culture to another. Can a statement whose application varies so widely still be called a principle, or is universality being claimed too easily?
A gang plank is permitted but is not to become normal practice, even where the direct contact proves quicker and nothing appears to go wrong. What exactly is being protected by keeping it exceptional, and is that protection worth the delay it costs?

6.9 Objective Questions

An operator in a workshop is instructed by the works manager to keep a machine running until the day’s target is met, and by the quality manager to stop it after every batch for inspection. The principle of management being violated is: [1]

Unity of direction
Unity of command
Scalar chain
Order

Assertion (A): Principles of management are not as exact as the principles of physics and chemistry. Reason (R): Principles of management are directed at influencing human behaviour, which cannot be tested under controlled conditions. Choose the correct option: [1]

Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A)
Both (A) and (R) are true but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A)
1. is true but (R) is false
1. is false but (R) is true

Fill in the blank: A direct contact permitted between two employees standing at the same level in different branches of the scalar chain is called a ______________. [1]
State whether the following statement is true or false: Taylor framed his principles from the viewpoint of the top level of management. [1]
Match each principle in Column A with the practice in Column B that illustrates it: [1]

Column A	Column B
a. Order	i. Employees are invited to propose improvements to their own operations
b. Equity	ii. Tools are kept in marked positions at every workbench
c. Initiative	iii. Reasonable security of service is offered to all employees
d. Stability of tenure	iv. Two employees doing similar work are placed on the same pay scale

6.10 Check Your Concepts

Why are principles of management described as contingent? Support the answer with one example. [2]
Distinguish between unity of command and unity of direction on any three bases. [3]
Explain Taylor’s principle of ‘science, not rule of thumb’, and state what he proposed should be standardised under it. [3]
In a large firm, an employee in one department contacts an employee of the same rank in another department directly instead of routing the message upward through the chain of superiors. Name the device being used, state the conditions attached to its use, and explain what its existence shows about the nature of principles of management. [4]
Explain any six of Fayol’s principles of management, stating in each case the difficulty that arises in an organisation when the principle is not observed. [6]

6.11 Case-Based Questions

Vaishali Foods has grown quickly over the last two years and now runs four branches. Its owner takes every decision himself, from the purchase of raw material to the grant of a day’s leave, and branch managers wait for his approval before acting. Deliveries have begun to run late, and two experienced branch managers have resigned, stating that they were given targets to meet but no freedom to act.

Name two principles of management that Vaishali Foods appears to have neglected, and justify the naming in each case. [2]
Explain how the neglect of these principles has produced the two difficulties described in the case. [2]