1868–1933

Mary Parker Follett

Mary Parker Follett was an American political thinker, social worker, lecturer, and management theorist. A Radcliffe graduate, she first studied government and then spent years developing community centers and civic programs in Boston. Those experiences shaped her view that coordination and democratic participation grow through relationships rather than command alone. The New State and Creative Experience explored group process, conflict, responsibility, and the creative integration of differing interests. From the mid-1920s, she applied these ideas directly to business administration and labour relations on both sides of the Atlantic. Follett belongs in this library because she brought power, participation, human interaction, and constructive conflict into management thought, offering an important counterweight to narrowly mechanical readings of classical organization and efficiency.