José Antonio Fernández Arena: Biography, Method and Contributions

José Antonio Fernández Arena He was one of the most important administration experts in Mexico. From a young age he became interested in administration and management with the use of mathematics. Like many twentieth-century Mexican administration authors, Fernández Arena's concepts have strong European and North American influences.

Arena studied in the United States and there was influenced by the administrative ideas of the country. The main focus of their ideas is linked to the audit process, and their ideas revolve around the good development of an administrative audit considering all the aspects that influence every process of managing a company.

National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), of which José Antonio Fernández Arena was the first graduate in Administration

Biography

José Antonio Fernández Arena was born on May 24, 1936 in the Federal District of Mexico. He dedicated his professional studies to the administration and he studied Accounting and Administration at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Studies in the United States

After graduation, he left for the United States to specialize in the administrative area. There he completed two specialties at the prestigious Northwestern and Standford universities. The knowledge that he got and the hobnobbing with students and intellectuals from the United States gave him broader ideas about administration.

He was the first graduate in the administration degree at the UNAM, and devoted his life to the development of texts related to the world of administration and its influence in the business world.

His thinking revolved around the satisfaction of objectives within companies through the use of administrative systems. After making numerous contributions to the global administration, he died on January 8, 1998.

Method

Fernández Arena saw administration as a social science whose objective is to satisfy the goals and needs of an institution using tools and systems that are built and reinforced over time. According to the author, the institutional objectives were the following:

Service goal

It is the objective that every company must have to provide a high level of satisfaction to its customers. It is about guaranteeing its consumers a service or good quality and in good condition.

Social objective

The social objective revolves around the place a company occupies in society. It is about the entablamento of quality relations with the government, with the investors and with the members of the community to which the company belongs that are affected or involved by the process of the same.

Likewise, the social objective seeks to take care of the monetary interests of all the parties involved, and uses both interpersonal relationships with important members of each area and public relations to keep the deal between entities in good condition.

Economic objective

The economic objective is to ensure the economic interests of the institution and its investors, distributing the profits equitably and correctly to maintain the maximum happiness of each group involved in the operation of the company.

Structure of the companies according to Fernández Arenas

For Fernández Arenas, the process of forming the business structure includes a balance between all the parties that make the company work. This involves all the personnel, the material resources -such as the capital and the area where it operates- and the systems that are used to keep everything in order.

In turn, the structure of the company must be complemented with the correct organization of all its assets. If the company has a correct organizational process, all the parties involved in the structure will have the highest possible quality, both the material and the staff employed by the institution.

According to Fernández Arenas, the organized structure divides the company into five equally important fragments:

The direction

The management of the company is divided into two parts. On the one hand, there is the administrative council or presidency, who are responsible for ensuring that the company's objectives are being met through the correct use of the provisions of meetings and agreements.

The second division of management is known as the general management, which evaluates the policies that are held within the institution but without leaving aside the external factors that may affect them. That is, certain changes in the environment to which a company belongs can mean a necessary alteration of the policies of the same.

Planning system

It is the leading part of a company that is responsible for managing all areas that make up the structure of a company to plan correctly the execution of plans and objectives using the resources available.

Operation system

It is the area of ​​the company that carries out the objectives and works subordinated to the planning created by the members of the planning system of the institution

External advice

This area does not carry out tasks that are directly linked to the operation of the institution, but functions that must be done so that the company remains standing, as all the legal and legal operations necessary for the company not to close or be fined.

Ideas

The operating system of Fernandez Arenas has the idea of ​​a structure broken down into several entities, similar to the ideas proposed by Ernest Dale, also emphasizing the Euro-American influence that the notions of the Mexican author had.

The fulfillment of social, business objectives and the rest of those proposed by Arenas, must keep the company standing by delegating functions to the staff.

Contributions to the administration

Among the most important works of Fernandez Arenas include two books: The administrative process Y Six management styles . In these books Arena embodied his ideas and broke down the administrative process in what he considered the fundamental parts within the companies.

Also, he wrote Administrative audit , where it raises the importance of a correct business audit taking into account the objectives of a company and all the areas and resources that are required to meet them. Many consider this book as their most important work.

References

1. Administrative Audit, José Antonio Fernández Arena, taken from dyndns.org
2. Six styles of administration, José Antonio Fernández Arena, 1984. Taken from books.google.com
3. José Antonio Fernández Arena, (n.d.). Taken from academia.edu
4. Most representative Mexican authors and the critical approach to the study of administration, Textos UNAM, (n.d.). Taken from unam.mx
5. Applications of quantitative methods to the decision making of the administration, Víctor Castro, (n.d.). PDF taken from 132.248.9.195