MARY PARKER FOLLETT

• Born 1868 near Boston, Mass

• Well to do family
• Attended Radcliffe/Harvard
• “Gaunt Bostonian spinster”
• Fluent in German and French
• Lived with her “long time companion”
• Five Books
 Acolades
• Peter Drucker
“The brightest star in the management firmament”
“Prophet of Management”
• Warren Bennis
“Swashbuckling advance scout of management
thinking”
• Rosabeth Moss Kanter
“Reading Mary Parker Follett is like entering a zone
of calm in a sea of chaos”
 FIVE BOOKS
• 1896 The Speaker of the House of
Representatives
• 1918 The New State – Group Organization, the
Solution for Popular Government
• 1924 Creative Experience
(1933 Died)
• 1941 Dynamic Administration – The Collected
Papers of Mary Parker Follett
• 1949 Freedom and Coordination
 The Speaker of the House
of Representatives (1896)
• Researched and written while still a college
student
• Examines the methods used by effective Speakers
to exert their power and influence
• Reviewed by Teddy Roosevelt (then head of the
NYC Board of Police Commissioners). He called
it indispensable reading for any study of Congress
 The New State (1918)
• Advocated the replacement of bureaucratic institutions by
group networks in which the people themselves analyzed
their problems and then produced and implemented their
own solutions
• Book critically acclaimed in both US and England
• MPF asked to be on several Boards (arbitration boards,
minimum wage boards, public tribunals, etc.)
• These experiences allowed MPF to examine the politics of
industrial relations
 Creative Experience (1924)

• Circular Response and Integrative Behavior

We react not only to the other party but also

to the relationship that exists between us,
thus creating in part our own response.
 Dynamic Administration (1941)
• Compilation of lectures given in New York at the annual
Bureau of Personnel Administration meetings

• Demonstrated how the ideas that contributed to a strong

and healthy society could also contribute to a creative and
successful business organization.

• Constructive Conflict
• Power
• Authority
• Leadership
 Constructive Conflict
• Don’t ask who is right in a conflict
• The proper response is to assume that both
sides are right, but to different questions
• Integrate both positions into a new and
different answer that satisfies what each
side considers right
• The end result is not victory or even
compromise, but Integration of Interests
 Power
• “Power Over vs. Power With”

• How to Reduce Power Over

– Integration
– “Law of the Situation”
– Make businesses more of a functional unity
Open knowledge
 Authority
• Strive for management with authority “all down
the line”
• Replace “ultimate authority” (by the CEO) with
“cumulative authority”
 Leadership
• Prerequisites for Leadership
– Thorough knowledge of the job
– Ability to grasp the total situation
– One who can organize the experience of the
group and thus get the full power of the group
– Vision for the future; Anticipate change

• Leadership can be learned

 Freedom and Coordination (1949)

• Compilation of lectures given in London at

the London School of Economics
• Profoundly interested in the individual in
society and how one could attain personal
fulfillment while striving at the same time
to create a well-ordered and just society
• Most developed of her ideas
 Conflict
• Three ways to resolve Conflict

Domination
Compromise
Integration
 Advantages of Integration
• Integration creates something new
• “Difference itself is not pathological”
• Leads to permanent solutions
 Steps to Integration
• Identify the differences – face the issues
• Evaluation leads to revaluation
• Break each side’s demands into parts
 Obstacles to Integration
• Requires intelligence, perception, discrimination,
and above all a brilliant inventiveness

• Some people enjoy domination

Undue influence of leaders

• Lack of training in integration

 Giving Orders
• Disadvantages of arbitrary commands
– Breaks initiative
– Discourages self reliance
– Lowers self respect
• Ways to give orders
– Depersonalize - Law of the situation
– Replace orders by teaching the techniques of a job
– Give reasons with the order
– All employees should know the purpose of the firm
 Criticisms
• Lack of experience in industry
• A “dreamy idealist”
– A social philosopher
• Lacked empirical data