Mary Parker Follett: photo, biography, years of life, contribution to management

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

Mary Parker Follet is an American social worker, sociologist, consultant, and author of books on democracy, human relations, and management. She studied management theory and political science and was the first to use such expressions as "conflict resolution", "tasks of the leader", "rights and powers". The first to open local centers for cultural and social events.

Mary Parker Follet (photo later in the article) believed that group organization not only benefits society as a whole, but also helps people improve their lives. In her opinion, representatives of different cultural and social strata, meeting face to face, begin to recognize each other. Thus, ethnic and socio-cultural diversity is a key element in the development of local communities and democracy. Follet's efforts have led to significant progress in understanding human relationships and how people should work together to create a peaceful and prosperous society.

Early Biography

Mary Parker Follet was born on 1868-03-09 in Quincy, Massachusetts, to a we althy Quaker family. There she spent her childhood and youth. Educated at Thayer Academy, she devoted almost all her free time to her family - Mary Parker Follet took care of her disabled mother. She then studied for a year (1890-1891) at Newnham College, Cambridge University (later Radcliffe College). In 1892 she joined the Society of Women Students. She graduated with honors in 1898. Follet taught at a private Boston school for several years and in 1896 published her first work, The Speaker of the House of Representatives (her dissertation at Radcliffe, written with the assistance of the historian Albert Bushnell Hart), which was a great success.

Work activity

From 1900 to 1908, Follet was a social worker in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood. In 1900 she organized a debating club there, and in 1902 a social and educational youth center. Through this work, she realized the need for places where people could gather and socialize, and began to campaign for community centers to open. In 1908, she was elected chairman of the Women's Municipal League Committee for the Enhanced Use of School Buildings. In 1911, the committee opened its first experimental social center at an east Boston high school. The success of the project has led to the opening of many similar institutions in the city.

Before becoming vice president of the National Community Center Associationin 1917, Follet was a member of the Massachusetts Minimum Wage Board. Interactions with evening schools and business leaders increased her interest in industrial administration and management. She also became involved in the social reform movement established by the Federal Council of Churches in America.

Creativity

In parallel with her political activities, Follet continued to write. In 1918 she published The New State, a preface to the revised 1924 edition by the British statesman Viscount Haldane. In the same year, her new work "Creative Experience" was published, dedicated to the interaction between people in a group process. Follet successfully applied many of her ideas to the Settlement clubs that raised street children.

Moving to the UK

For 30 years Follet lived in Boston with Isabelle Briggs. In 1926, after the death of the latter, she moved to England to live and work there, as well as study at Oxford. In 1928 she advised the League of Nations and the International Labor Organization in Geneva. She lived in London from 1929 with Katharina Furs, who worked for the Red Cross and founded volunteer medical teams to serve military personnel in the UK and other countries of the British Empire.

In her later years, Mary Parker Follet became a popular management writer and teacher in the business world. In 1933 she began teaching at the Londonschool of economics. After a series of lectures in the business administration department, she fell ill and returned to Boston in October.

Mary Parker Follett died 1933-18-12.

After her death, her writings and speeches were published in 1942. And in 1995, Mary Parker Follet: Prophet of Management was published.

In 1934, Radcliffe College named her one of its most distinguished alumni.

About Community Centers

Follet was a strong supporter of community centers. She argued that democracy will work best when people are organized into local communities. In her opinion, community centers play an important role in democracy, being a place of meeting, communication and discussion of topics that concern them. When people from different cultural or social backgrounds meet face to face, they get to know each other better. In the work of Mary Parker Follet, ethnic and sociocultural diversity is a key element of successful community and democracy.

On social organization and democracy

In her book The New State, published in 1918, Follet argued in favor of public social networks. In her opinion, social experience is essential for the exercise of their civic function, which has a significant impact on the final work of the state.

According to Follet, a person is shaped by the social process and brought up by it daily. There are no self-made people. What they possess as individuals is hidden from society in the depths of social life. Individuality is the ability to unite. It is measured by the depth and breadth of true relationships. A person is not an individual insofar as he is different from others, but insofar as he is a part of them.

Thus, Mary Parker Follet encouraged people to participate in group and community activities and be active citizens. She believed that through social activities they would learn about democracy. In The New State, she writes that no one will give power to the people - this needs to be learned.

According to Mary Parker Follet, the school of human relations should begin in the cradle and continue into kindergarten, school and play, as well as all kinds of controlled activities. Civics should not be taught in courses or lessons. It should be acquired only through that way of life and actions that teach how to raise public consciousness. This should be the goal of all school education, all recreation, all family and club life, civic life.

Organizing groups, in her opinion, not only helps society as a whole, but also helps people improve their lives. Such formations provide better opportunities for the expression of individual opinion and the quality of life of group members.

About management

For the last ten years of her life, the distinguished American has been studying and writing about administration and management. Mary Parker Follet believed that her understanding of the work of building local communities could be applied to the management of organizations. She suggested that through directinteraction with each other in achieving common goals, the members of the organization could realize themselves in the process of its development.

Follet stressed the importance of human relationships, not mechanical or operational ones. Thus, her work contrasted with the "scientific management" of Frederick Taylor (1856-1915) and the approach of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, which emphasized the study of the time spent on a given task and the optimization of the movements required for this.

Mary Parker Follet emphasized the importance of interaction between management and employees. She looked at management and leadership holistically, anticipating modern systems approaches. In her opinion, a leader is one who sees the whole, not the particular.

Follet was one of the first (and for a long time remained one of the few) who integrated the idea of organizational conflict into management theory. She is considered by some to be the “mother of conflict resolution.”

About power

Mary Parker Follet developed a circular theory of power. She recognized the integrity of the community and proposed the idea of "reciprocal relations" to understand the interaction of the individual with other people. In her Creative Experience (1924), she wrote that power begins … with the organization of reflex arcs. Then they combine into more powerful systems, the totality of which forms an organism with even greater capabilities. At the level of personality, a person increases control over himself when he combines various tendencies. In the sphere of social relations, power iscentripetally self-evolving. This is a natural, inevitable result of the life process. One can always test the justice of power by determining whether it is an integral part of the process outside of it.

Follet distinguished between "power over" and "power with" (coercive or facilitating force). She suggested that organizations operate on the latter principle. For her, "power with" is what democracy should have in mind in politics or production. She advocated the principle of integration and the separation of powers. Her ideas on negotiation, conflict resolution, power, and employee participation have had a significant impact on the development of organizational studies.

Legacy

Mary Parker Follet was a pioneer of community organizing. Her advocacy for the use of schools as community centers helped create many such institutions in Boston, where they established themselves as important educational and social forums. Her argument about the need to organize communities as a school of democracy led to a better understanding of the dynamics of democracy in general.

As for the managerial ideas of Mary Parker Follet, after her death in 1933 they were practically forgotten. They disappeared from mainstream American management and organizational thinking in the 1930s and 1940s. However, Follet continued to attract a following in the UK. Gradually, her work became relevant again, especially in 1960s Japan.

In closing

Books, reports and lecturesFollet had a lasting impact on the practice of business administration as they combined a deep understanding of individual and group psychology with a knowledge of scientific management and a commitment to a broad, positive social philosophy.

Her ideas are regaining popularity, and are now considered "forefront" in organizational theory and public administration. These include the idea of finding "win-win" solutions, community-based solutions, the power of ethnic and socio-cultural diversity, situational leadership, and a focus on process. However, too often they remain unrealized. At the beginning of the XXI century. it is still the inspiring and guiding ideal it was at the beginning of the twentieth century.