Unsung: Mary Parker Follett
Unsung: Mary Parker Follett
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Research for Social Change
October 3, 2024 No Comments
When we think of the pervasive literature and research in the field of management, staff and leadership development, and organizational development the names Max Weber stands out. But the work of Mary Parker Follet was innovative influential and far outpaced in the work of her contemporaries when she formulated the idea of “power with” instead of “power over” employees. A thorough reading of her work one would identify fairly quickly that Follett postulated, 2 decades ahead of Parsons and Bertalanfy that the organization, is a social system made up of a complicated web of social relationships (Follett 1918). Following in the tradition of the early organicists Follett described several concepts that are at play within the organization that have served as the foundations for the work of Russel Ackoff and later Peter Senge’s articulation of the fifth discipline. Modes of activity, modes of association and reciprocal relations are terms introduced by Follett and have been expounded by Ackoff (1984, 2002, and 1971) and Senge (1990).
The organicist’s theoretical precept did not succumb completely to the Cartesian doctrine. During the 20th century while Taylor was beginning to experiment with the effect of environment on the productivity of workers, and scientific management was taking hold Follett continued to promote the holistic viewpoint of the world and laid the early foundations for Bertalanfy’ s general Systems Theory (1950). Parsons Social System (1951).
Mary Parker Follett asserted quite boldly in her seminal work Creative Experience that "the social sciences are not gathering all the fruits of certain recent developments of thought". She held that society, communities organizations and governmental processes are not rooted in the thought or activity of individuals alone (a part separated from the whole through reductionist thinking), but rather the collective force of individuals within a group and the interrelatedness of multiple groups interacting with one another creating a common will.
Follett further postulated that the concept of a social system, which she termed a community, is not a static existence of individuals but rather a process of integrated groups within layers of complexities. Follett’s view of society or the social system positions groups as the foundation of the social process. The group process involves an interweaving of individual differences and wills as opposed to either compromise or absorption. This interweaving of wills produces a collective purpose that is greater than the purpose of the individual components of the group. In Follett’s explication of the group process, the foundations of communities and the process of community, exists
the basic platform of a social system and the belief that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, which would be later articulated by Ackoff (1984) and other systems thinkers of the late 20th century.
Follett (1918) argues that what is critical to understanding any kind of social system including organizational dynamics, is the inter-relatedness of individual components, thus the social system, be it a community, household, or organization, is a process of relationships, personalities, purpose, wills and loyalties that are created through a constant process of intermingling of the actors within the social system (Follett 1918). While this process existed inside the walls of the institutions as well as behind the picket fences of the community living arrangements that superseded the institutions there was no understanding of the concept of group process or community as a process, thus the individual residents and the staff that support them were forced to suppress their wills and compromise the loyalties desire and needs.
Follett argues that wills should unite to form a cohesive whole. This would be the basis of the definition of a system later articulated by Bertalanfy (1950), and Parsons (1951) and Ackoff (1984). Moreover, Follett (1918) holds that the types of societies being sought after by individuals can only be obtained through creative properties generated by groups and the group process; this is how the social system survives through the evolution of group activity and subsequent creative forces.
A brilliant theorist, prolific writer graduate of Radcliff and the first to coin the phrase Transformational Leadership Mary Parker Follett was way ahead of her time and doesn't get the the credit she is properly due.
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