Søren Voxted

100 years of Henri Fayol

It is the 100th anniversary of the publication by French mining engineer and management author Henri Fayol (1841-1925) of his essential text Administration Industrielle et Generale. The text, published first in 1916 in a professional journal and one year later as book, became one of the most important contributions to the development of modern management theory. Because of the book, Fayol is widely acknowledged as a founder of modern management. The aim of the paper is to mark the 100th anniversary of Henri Fayol’s publication of Administration Industrielle et Generale and, by extension, to answer the question whether Henri Fayol’s contributions and thoughts are still relevant in contemporary management theory.

Frontline Managers: A Re-examination of Their Role in Talent Management

Using qualitative data obtained from 18 frontline managers working in the Danish public sector, this chapter shows that frontline managers display a leadership role that differs from that of other managers including aspects of recruitment, competence development, and career planning. Three distinct themes that distinguish frontline managers emerged from the data. (1) Their nearness to and involvement in the professionalism of the unit. (2) Operating at the interface between two knowledge regimes relating to the core task and to higher management. (3) Their role in creating a new professionalism which occurs when frontline managers interact with and across several professions. Based on these findings, the chapter argues that frontline managers should constitute an independent focus point for Talent Management.