Developed at same time as scientific management, the administrative theory "emphasized management functions and attempted to generate broad administrative principles that would serve as guidelines for the rationalization of organizational activities" (Scott p. 36). The principal contributors to this management theory were Henri Fayol (1949), Mooney and Reiley (1939) and Gulick and Urwick (1937).

Henri Fayol (1841 - 1920) was a contemporary of Frederick Winslow Taylor. He started his career as a junior Engineer in Franch Mining Company. He published his pioneering work Adminstration Industrielle et Generale in 1916 which was later published in English in 1949 under the title "General Industrial Management". This book is well received and is rated as one of the best treatise on Management. Overall Fayol attempted towards a comprehensive theory of management applicable to all organisations. Fayol believed that techniques of effective management could be defined and taught and that managerial organisation is as valid an area of management as workers organisation. Fayol's work included defining of a body of principles, which would enable a managert to buildup a formal structure of the organization and to administer it in a rational way. Fayol is a stauch advocate of the Universality of management concepts and principles. The perception and analysis of management as a separate discipline is his original contribution to management thought. Fayol was the real father of administrative management theory. The five functions of managers, according to Fayol were plan, organize, command, coordinate, and control. His fourteen principles of management included division of work, authority and responsibility, discipline, unity of command, unity of direction, subordination of individual interests to general interests, renumeration of personnel, centralization, scalar chain, order, equity, stability of tenure of personnel, initiative, and esprit de corps (union is strength).

Administrative theorists looked at productivity improvements from the "top down", as distinguished from the Scientific Approach of Tayler, who reorganized from "bottom up". Administrative theorists developed general guidelines of how to formalize organizational structures and relationships. They laid emphasis on the job in preference to the worker. The focus was the determinatiuon of the types ofspecialisation and hierarchy that would optimise the efficiency of the organisation.

The Administrative management approach emphasizes the manager and the functions of management.