ABSTRACT
The practice of management had been established for the best part of a century before theoretical approaches were developed which might offer guidance to practitioners and short circuit their learning how to make their labour more effective. Curiously the first systematic general management text was not Anglo-Saxon. Henri Fayol’s Administration Industrielle et Générale was based on his experience working for a French coal mining company. It was published in French in 1916 and not translated into English till 1949 by which time Taylor’s ‘scientific management’ and much of the subsequent ‘human relations’ work had already been completed. But whereas they focused primarily on the employer-employee relationship, Fayol’s aim was more general.
