ABSTRACT
This chapter examines various storytellers on the subject and status of Frances Perkins in relation to the field of management and organizations. It explores how Perkins became “lost” to the study of management and organization. It argues that Perkins’s work as a proto-management theorist was overlooked and supressed by several discourses, including that of gender, and social phenomena such as the New Deal and the settlement ethos. When women take up malestream roles, there persists a drive to subjugate them back into subject positions which are consistent with taken-for-granted gender attributes and behaviour. In a less theatrical recitation, Martin reveals that Perkins was reti-cent about accepting the appointment but had over several months compiled a handful of notes. Franklin D. Roosevelt appreciated when Perkins thought ahead to secure measures of the New Deal, should and when the National Industrial Recovery Act died.
