Mary Parker Follet is an American social worker, sociologist, consultant, and author of books on democracy, human relations, and management. She was engaged in management theory and political science and was the first to use such expressions as “conflict resolution”, “leader’s tasks”, “rights and powers”. The first began to open local centers for cultural and social events.
Mary Parker Follet (photo below in the article) believed that a group organization not only benefits the society as a whole, but also helps people improve their lives. In her opinion, representatives of different cultural and social layers, meeting face to face, begin to recognize each other. Thus, ethnic and sociocultural diversity is a key element in the development of the local community and democracy. Follett’s efforts have led to significant progress in understanding human relations and how people should work together to create a peaceful and prosperous society.
Early biography
Mary Parker Follet was born on September 3, 1868 in Quincy, Massachusetts, in a wealthy Quaker family. There she spent her childhood and youth. Having been educated at Thayer Academy, she devoted almost all of her free time to her family - Mary Parker Follet took care of her disabled mother. Then she 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. For several years, Follett taught at a private Boston school and in 1896 published her first work, Speaker of the House of Representatives (her dissertation in Radcliffe, written with the assistance of historian Albert Bushnell Hart), which was a great success.
Labor activity
From 1900 to 1908, Follet was a social worker in the Boston area of Roxbury. In 1900, she organized a discussion club there, and in 1902, a social and educational youth center. Through this work, she recognized the need for places where people could gather and socialize, and began to struggle for the opening of community centers. In 1908, she was elected chairman of the Women's Municipal League Committee on the Enhanced Use of School Buildings. In 1911, the committee opened its first experimental social center in East Boston High School. The success of the project led to the opening of many such institutions in the city.
Prior to becoming Vice President of the National Community Center Association in 1917, Follet was a member of the Massachusetts Minimum Wage Council. Interaction 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.
Creation
In parallel with political activity, Follet continued to write. In 1918, she published the book The New State, and the British statesman Viscount Haldane wrote the preface to the revised 1924 edition. In the same year, her new work, Creative Experience, was published, dedicated to the interaction between people in a group process. Follett successfully applied many of her ideas to Setlement clubs, which brought up street children.
Relocation 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 to study at Oxford. In 1928, she advised the League of Nations and the International Labor Organization in Geneva. She lived in London since 1929 with Katharina Fers, who worked in the Red Cross and founded volunteer medical units to serve the military personnel of Great Britain and other countries of the British Empire.
In her later years, Mary Parker Follett became a popular book writer on management and a teacher in the business world. In 1933, she began teaching at the London School of Economics. After a series of lectures in the business administration department, she became ill, and in October returned to Boston.
Mary Parker Follet died on 12/18/1933.
After her death, her works and speeches were published in 1942. And in 1995, the book Mary Parker Follet: The Prophet of Management was published.
In 1934, Radcliffe College named her one of its most prominent graduates.
About community centers
Follet was a strong supporter of community centers. She argued that democracy will work better when people are organized into local communities. In her opinion, community centers play an important role in democracy, being a meeting place, communication and discussion of issues 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 socio-cultural diversity is a key element in a successful community and democracy.
About social organization and democracy
In her book The New State, published in 1918, Follet spoke in favor of public social networks. In her opinion, social experience is important for the implementation of their civic function, which has a significant impact on the ultimate work of the state.
According to Follet, a person is formed by the social process and brought up daily by him. There are no people who have made themselves. What they possess as individuals is hidden from society in the bowels of social life. Individuality is the ability to unite. It is measured by the depth and breadth of true relationships. Man is not an individual as much as he is different from others, but how much is a part of them.
Thus, Mary Parker Follet encouraged people to participate in group and social events and to 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 must be learned.
According to Mary Parker Follet, the school of human relations should begin with a cradle and continue in kindergarten, school and play, as well as in all types of controlled activity. Citizenship should not be taught in courses or lessons. It should be acquired only through that way of life and actions that teach how to increase social consciousness. This should be the goal of all school education, all leisure, all family and club, civic life.
The organization of groups, in her opinion, not only helps society as a whole, but also helps people improve their lives. Such formations provide better opportunities for expressing individual opinions and the quality of life of group members.
About Management
The last ten years of her life, an outstanding American woman studied and wrote about administration and management. Mary Parker Follet believed that her understanding of community building work could be applied to managing organizations. She suggested that through direct interaction with each other in achieving common goals, members of the organization could realize themselves in the process of its development.
Follett emphasized the importance of human relationships, not mechanical or operational. Thus, her work contrasted with the “scientific management” of Frederick Taylor (1856-1915) and the approach of Frank and Lillian Gilbret, in which the emphasis was on studying the time spent on a particular task and optimizing the movements required for this.
Mary Parker Follet emphasized the importance of collaboration between management and employees. She looked at management and leadership holistically, anticipating modern systemic approaches. In her opinion, a leader is one who sees the whole, not the particular.
Follet became one of the first (and for a long time remained one of the few) who integrated the idea of organizational conflict into management theory. Some consider her a "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 “mutual 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 are combined into more powerful systems, the combination of which forms an organism with even greater capabilities. At the level of personality, a person raises control over himself when he unites various inclinations. In the field of social relations, power is centripetally self-developing. This is a natural, inevitable result of the life process. You can always check the justice of the authorities by determining whether it is an integral part of the process outside it.
Follett distinguished between “power over” and “power with” (coercive or contributing force). She suggested that organizations act on the latter principle. For her, “power s” is what democracy must keep in mind in politics or production. She advocated the principle of integration and separation of powers. Her ideas on negotiations, conflict resolution, power and employee participation had a significant impact on the development of organizational research.
Heritage
Mary Parker Follet was a community organization pioneer. Her campaign to use 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 management ideas of Mary Parker Follet, then after her death in 1933 they were almost forgotten. They disappeared from the mainstream of American management and organizational thinking in the 1930s and 1940s. However, Follet continued to attract followers in the UK. Gradually, her work again became relevant, especially in the 1960s in Japan.
Finally
Follett's books, lectures, and lectures have had a lasting impact on the practice of business administration because 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 gaining popularity again, and now they are considered to be "advanced" in organizational theory and public administration. These include the idea of finding “win-win” solutions, community-based solutions, the strength of ethnic and socio-cultural diversity, situational leadership, and focusing on the process. However, too often they remain unrealized. At the beginning of the XXI century. it is still an inspiring and guiding ideal, as it was at the beginning of the twentieth century.