During the same period as Frederick Winslow Taylor developed the Scientific Management Approach in the early twentieth century in the United States, the French industrialist Henri Fayol also coined principles for successful management. The ideas put forward by Henri Fayol were not presented to the English speaking world until the late 40th of the twentieth century, when they were first translated from French into English.

Henri Fayol proposed 14 principles of management, which should act as a manual for managers in their daily work, and which should increase the effectiveness and work moral of both workers and managers.

Generally, the 14 principles can be grouped into coordination and specialization principles. The coordination principles give guidance about how to structure the organization in a hierarchical and highly effective fashion, whereas the specialization principles give guidance about how to structure work most efficiently.

Below, the 14 principles put forward by Henri Fayol are presented.

1. Specialization of work: Henri Fayol proposed that a specialization of work increases output by making employees more efficient.

2. Discipline: Employees must obey orders, and the organization should stress the importance of following rules and orders.

3. Authority: Managers must be able to give orders; therefore the organization must give managers the legitimate authority to give orders to subordinates.

4. Unity of command: Every employee should only have one boss to report to.

5. Unity of direction: Each activity performed by the organization should only have one manager giving directions.

6. Subordination of individual interest: The individual interest of an employee should never take precedence over the interest of the organization.

7. Remuneration policy: Employees should always be paid a fair payment for their services to the organization.

8. Centralization: Decisions should generally be taken by top management, and not by the subordinates of the company.

9. Scalar chain of command: Communication from the top of the organization to the employees should always follow a scalar chain of command, meaning that communication should preferably flow top-down.

10. Order: All materials and employees should have a prescribed place, where they should always be found.

11. Equity: There should always be a principle of fairness about how the organization treats its employees.

12. Personnel tenure: Limited employee turnover is generally a good thing, and good employees should be offered lifetime employment.

13. Initiative: Employees should be given the ability to show individual initiative, which will result in great results for the company.

14. Esprit de corps: There should be harmony and cohesion between members of the organization, which would result in high work moral and motivation.

The 14 principles put forward by Henri Fayol historically had a great impact on the structuring of organizations in the francophone world, and many of today’s modern companies around the world still exhibits many of the managerial and organizational traits described by Henri Fayol.