Born in Quincy, Massachusetts, Mary Parker Follett attended ‘Thayer Academy and the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women in Cambridge (now part of Harvard). She spent time at England’s Cambridge University and in Paris. Her first published work was The Speaker of the House of Representatives (1896) which she wrote while still a student.
Follett’s career was largely spent in social work though her books appeared regularly – The New State: Group Organization – The Solution of Popular Government (1918), an influential description of Follett’s brand of dynamic democracy, and Creative Experience (1924), Follett’s first business-oriented book. In her later years she was in great demand as a lecturer. After the death of a long-time partner, Isobel Briggs in 1926, she moved to London.
Follett’s work was largely neglected in the West, but she was honored in Japan, where there is a Follett Society. Her work has now been brought to a wider audience through the UK academic Pauline Graham – in 1994, Graham edited Mary Parker Follett: Prophet of Management a compendium of Follett’s writings with commentaries from a host of contemporary figures including Kanter, Drucker and Mintzberg.
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ary Parker Follett’s work stands as a humane counterpoint to that of Frederick Taylor and the proponents of Scientific Management. Follett was a female, liberal humanist in an era dominated by reactionary males intent on mechanizing the world of business.
‘We should remember that we can never wholly separate the human from the mechanical sides,’ warns Follett in Dynamic Administration. ‘The study of human relations in business and the study of the technology of operating are bound up together.’
During her life, Mary Parker Follett’s thinking on management was generally ignored – though in Japan there was a great deal of interest in her perspectives. In her advocacy of human relations she was ahead of her time, something acknowledged by E.F.L. Brech in his book The Principles and Practice of Management (1953). ‘Mary Follett, broadly, was less interested in the practice of management than in the extent to which the everyday incidents and problems reflected the presence or absence of sound principle. She was chiefly concerned to teach principles in simple language, amply illustrated from everyday events – not the mechanics of management, but its special human character, its nature as a social process, deeply embedded in the emotions of man and in the interrelations to which the everyday working of industry necessarily gives rise – at manager levels, at worker levels, and, of course, between the two,’ writes Brech. ‘Bearing in mind she was speaking of America in the early 1920s, her thinking can be described as little less than revolutionary, and certainly a generation ahead of its time. There is no evidence that Mary Follett had any contact with the persons who sponsored or conducted the Hawthorne Investigations, but the findings of those investigations, when they appeared in their full form in the 1930s, were a striking testimony to the soundness of her teaching.’
Published eight years after her death, Dynamic Administration is a collection of Follett’s papers on manage-
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ment gathered from 12 lectures between 1925 and 1933. It includes a great deal of forthright and resoundingly contemporary-sounding comments. ‘I think we should undepartmentalize our thinking in regard to every problem that comes to us,’ says Follett. ‘I do not think that we have psychological and ethical and economic problems. We have human problems, with psychological, ethical and economical aspects, and as many others as you like.’
Follett advocates giving greater responsibility to people – at a time when the mechanical might of mass production was at its height. ‘Responsibility is the great developer of men,’ she writes. There is also a modem ring to Follett’s advice on leadership: ‘The most successful leader of all is one who sees another picture not yet actualized.’ Follett suggests that a leader is someone who sees the whole rather than the particular, organizes the experiences of the group, offers a vision of the future and trains followers to become leaders.
‘Follett sent one principal message: relationships matter,’ says Rosabeth Moss Kanter. ‘Underpinning all of her work is the importance of relationships, not just transactions, in organizations. She pointed to the reciprocal nature of relationships, the mutual influence developed when people work together, however formal authority is defined.’1
In particular, Follett explores conflict. She argues that as conflict is a fact of life ‘we should, I think, use it to work for us’. Follett points out three ways of dealing with confrontation: domination, compromise or integration. The latter, she concludes, is the only positive way forward. This can be achieved by first ‘uncovering’ the real conflict and then taking ‘the demands of both sides and breaking them up into their constituent parts’. ‘Our outlook is narrowed, our activity is restricted, our chances of business success largely diminished when our thinking is constrained within the limits of what has been called an either-or situation. We should never allow ourselves to be bullied by an “either-or”. There is often the possibility of something better than either of two given alternatives,’ Follett writes.
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To some, Follett remains a Utopian idealist, out of touch with reality; to others, she is a torchbearer of good sense whose ideas have sadly not had significant impact on organizations.
‘Integration requires understanding, in-depth understanding,’
says Henry Mintzberg. ‘It requires serious commitment and dedication. It takes effort, and it depends on creativity. There is precious little of all of these qualities in too many of our organizations today.’
Notes
1 Quoted by Graham, Pauline (editor), in Mary Parker Follett:
Prophet of Management (1994).