ABSTRACT
Mary Parker Follett was a management theorist, organizational leader, political scientist, community organizer and social entrepreneur, among other titles. Follett focused on transitions where lives hung in the balance between uniting and separating: immigrants becoming citizens, adolescents becoming adults, entry-level workers advancing – or not. Follett belongs to an Enlightenment tradition of faith in science to solve social problems and evolve a better society, a New England ethos of self-reliance and pragmatism, and a transcendentalist culture of rejoicing in the powers of imagination. Follett founded and led debate clubs, social centres, and placement bureaus; she mediated industrial conflicts, and she engaged dynamic relating in business. She argues that elite business schools went astray when they organized management as a hybrid discipline made up of core or foundational disciplines in the social and quantitative sciences on the one hand, and applied fields such as marketing and finance on the other.
