Mary Parker Follett

Biography

Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) was an American social worker, management consultant, and political theorist whose ideas on organizational theory, democracy, and conflict resolution were decades ahead of their time. Born in Quincy, Massachusetts, Follett graduated from Radcliffe College (the Harvard annex for women) and studied at Newnham College, Cambridge. She began her career in social work, establishing community centers in Boston that brought together diverse groups for collaborative problem-solving. Her first major book, The New State (1918), proposed a radical reimagining of democracy based on neighborhood groups and participatory governance rather than representative institutions. She argued that genuine democracy requires active citizen participation in local communities, not merely voting. Later, Follett turned her ideas to management theory, becoming an influential consultant to business leaders in both the United States and Britain. Her concepts of "power with" (collaborative) rather than "power over" (coercive), integrative conflict resolution, and participatory management anticipated developments in organizational theory by fifty years. Peter Drucker called her the "prophet of management."