ABSTRACT
Mary Parker Follett was a social scientist who challenged the precepts of scientific management and helped lay the foundations of the human relations school of management. In particular, she suggested that the only viable form of control was coordination: organisations based on command and control were inefficient and would not survive. She challenged also the role of specialist ‘experts’, and argued that the best learning is that which we acquire for ourselves, rather than relying on others to do our thinking for us. A critical, independent thinker, Follett had a powerful impact on management theory in the 1920s and 1930s, and her ideas continue to resonate today.
