4 important Principles of Co-Ordination as explained by Mary Follett

4 important Principles of Co-Ordination

Mary Follett explains the following fundamental principles of coordination:

(1) Co-ordination by direct contact of the responsible people concerned.

(2) Co-ordination in the early stages.

(3) Co-ordination as the reciprocal relating of all the factors in a situation.

(4) Co-ordination as a continuing process.

(1) In regard to the first principle, co-ordination by direct contact of the responsible people concerned, we find in some industries that control is coming more and more to be effected through cross-relations between heads of departments instead of up and down the line through the chief executive.

(2) The second principle of co-ordination in the early stages means that the direct contact must begin in the earliest stages of the process. We see how this works in the correlation of policies in a business.

If the head of the production department meets the heads of the sales and finance and personnel departments with a predetermined policy, and is confronted by them) each with a pre-determined policy, agreement will be found difficult.

Of course, they then begin to ‘play polities’, or that is often the tendency – a deplorable from a coercion. But if the head of the production department, while he is forming his policy, meets and discuss with the other heads the questions involved, it is far more likely to lead the successful coordination.

That is, you cannot with the greatest degree of success for your undertaking, make policy-forming and-policy adjustment two separate policies have been completed.

(3) The third principle, co-ordination as the reciprocal relating of all the factors in a situation, shows us just what this process of co-ordination actually is. Think for a moment what happens between the heads of departments in a business.

You cannot envisage the process accurately by thinking of A as adjusting himself to B, to C and to D. A adjusts himself to B and also to a B influenced by C and to a B influenced by D and to C influenced by A himself -and so on. One could work it out mathematically.

This sort of reciprocal relating this interpenetration of every part by every other part, and again every other part as it has been permeated, by all, should be the goal of a U attempts at co-ordination, a goal, of course, never wholly reached.

(4) The fourth principle of co-ordination as a continuing process means that the machinery for co-ordination would ‘be continuous, not set up for special occasions.

Now continuous machinery for working out the principles of relation, whether it be in a factory or nations or internationality, is of the very essence of freedom. Collectively to discover and follow certain principles of action makes for individual freedom. Continuous machinery for this purpose is an essential factor in the only kind of control we can contemplate.

Another advantage is that then the circle, of spiral, is not broken in the transition from planning to activity and from activity to further planning, facts change, we must keep up with the facts, keeping up with the facts changes the facts. In other words, the process of adjustment changes the things to be adjusted.