Mary Parker Follett Prophet of ManagementPauline Graham This is a reprint of a previously published work. She was the predecessor of modern theorists on management. Almost everything written today about leadershipand organizations comes from Mary Parker Follett's writings. |
Contents
| 35 | |
| 67 | |
| 87 | |
Power | 97 |
The Giving of Orders | 121 |
The Basis of Authority | 141 |
Mary Parker Folletts View on Power the Giving of Orders and Authority An Alternative to Hierarchy or a Utopian Ideology? | 154 |
The Essentials of Leadership | 163 |
THE INDIVIDUAL THE GROUP AND SOCIETY | 227 |
The Individual in the Group | 229 |
The Individual in the Group | 240 |
The Individual in Society | 247 |
BUSINESSTHE WAY AHEAD | 265 |
Business in Society | 267 |
Most QuotedLeast Heeded The Five Senses of Follett | 282 |
Epilogue | 291 |
Thoughts on The Essentials of Leadership | 177 |
Coordination | 183 |
Some Fresh Air for Management? Henry Mintzberg | 199 |
Reflections on Design and the Third Way | 205 |
The Process of Control | 213 |
Bibliography of Mary Parker Folletts Writings | 297 |
Index | 299 |
About the Contributors | 307 |
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Common terms and phrases
activity asked authority bargaining become behavior business administration business management called capital co-ordination collective bargaining compromise conception conference conflict consider create cross-functional teams cross-functioning deal decision domination dynamic economic Elton Mayo employees environment executive experience fact factory foreman frigidaire function giving of orders Harvard Business School head Henry Mintzberg Ibid ideal ideas important individual industry influence integration interests interweaving John Child knowledge labor leader leadership lectures Lyndall Urwick Mary Parker Follett matter means ment merely method organisation organization Parker Follett London perhaps person Peter Drucker political power-over power-with principle problems production psychology purpose question ROSABETH MOSS KANTER sense situation social process social psychology society someone talk tell theory thing thought tion trade union understand union unity Urwick Warren Bennis whole wish word workers workman
Popular passages
Page 113 - Divided or conferred authority is non-psychological authority; "encroaching control" is not a genuine control. Power is not a preexisting thing which can be handed out to someone, or wrenched from someone. We have seen again and again the failure of "power" conferred. You could give me dozens of cases. The division of power is not the thing to be considered, but that method of organization which will generate power. The moral right to an authority which has not been psychologically developed, which...
Page 119 - Cf. Creative Experience, p. xii: "Our task is not to learn where to place power; it is how to develop power. . . . Genuine power can only be grown, it will slip from every arbitrary hand that grasps it; for genuine power is not coercive control, but coactive control. Coercive power is the curse of the universe; coactive power, the enrichment and advancement of every human soul.
Page 165 - While this is undoubtedly true of many business men, yet there are many today of whom it is not true. It is no longer the universally accepted type of administrative leadership. We saw two weeks ago that in scientifically managed plants, with their planning departments, their experts, their staff officials, their trained managers of the line, few " orders " are given in the old sense of the word. When therefore we are told that large-scale ability means masterfulness and autocratic will, some of...
Page 183 - It seems to me that the first test of business administration, of industrial organization, should be whether you have a business with all its parts so co-ordinated, so moving together in their closely knit and adjusting activities, so linking, interlocking, interrelating, that they make a working unit— that is, not a congeries of separate pieces, but what I have called a functional whole or integrative unity.
Page 77 - ... for this means how far it changes the conflict. I began this section by saying that the first step in integration is to bring the differences into the open. If the first step is to put clearly before ourselves what there is to integrate, there is something very important for us to note, — namely, that the highest lights in a situation are not always those which are most indicative of the real issues involved. Many situations are decidedly complex, involve numerous and varied activities, overlapping...
Page 281 - When people talk of substituting the service motive for the profit motive, I always want to ask: Why this wish to simplify motive when there is nothing more complex? Take any one of our actions to-day and examine it. There probably have been several motives for it. It is true that if anyone asked you why you did so and so, you would probably pick out to present to the public the motive which you thought did you the most credit. But the fact of the actual complexity remains. We work for profit, for...
Page 222 - The belief that we can is a drag upon our thinking. What we need is some process for meeting problems. When we think we have solved a problem, well, by the very process of solving, new elements or forces come into the situation and you have a new problem on your hands to be solved.
Page 221 - Allied Shipping Control." He thinks that adjustments between nations should be made not through their Foreign Offices, but between those who exercise responsible authority in the matters concerned, that is, between departmental ministers. This corresponds, you see, to what I have said of the cross-relations between departments in a business. And in regard to the principle of early stages, Sir Arthur shows us most convincingly that a genuine international policy cannot be evolved by first formulating...
Page 267 - I SAID in the preceding lecture that for most people the word "profession" connotes a foundation of science and a motive of service. It would be well, therefore, for us to examine the idea of service. I do not wholly like the present use of that word. In the first place, it has been so over-used that we are tired of it — "Service is our motto," "Service with a smile,
Page 81 - circular behavior" emphasized the reverberating character of human exchanges, in which each actor responds to a situation he helped create a moment ago. She pointed out that "response is always to a relation. I respond, not only to you, but to the relation between you and me."41 This idea took on considerable meaning as workers tried to describe a helping process in which they did not attempt to change the fixed and immutable "personality...