Known for: pioneering ideas introducing human psychology and human relations into industrial management
Occupation:social worker, management theory writer and speaker
Dates: 1868-1933
Mary Parker Follett Biography:
Modern management theory owes a lot to a nearly-forgotten woman writer, Mary Parker Follett.
Mary Parker Follett was born in Quincy, Massachusetts. She studied at the Thayer Academy, Braintree, Massachusetts, where she credited one of her teachers with influencing many of her later ideas. In 1894, she used her inheritance to study at the Society for Collegiate Instruction of Women, sponsored by Harvard, going on to a year at Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1890. She studied on and off at Radcliffe as well, starting in the early 1890s.
In 1898, Mary Parker Follett graduated summa cum laude from Radcliffe. Her research at Radcliffe was published in 1896 and again in 1909 as The Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Mary Parker Follett began working in Roxbury as a voluntary social worker in 1900. In 1908 she became chair of the Women 's Municipal League Committee on Extended Use of School Buildings. In 1911, she and others opened the East Boston High School Social Center. She also helped found other social centers in Boston.
In 1917, Mary Parker Follett took on the vice-presidency of the National Community Center Association, and in 1918 published her book on community, democracy, and government,The New State.
Mary Parker Follett published another book, Creative Experience, in 1924, with more of her ideas about the creative interaction of people in group process. In 1926, she moved to England to live and work, and to study at Oxford. In 1928, Follett consulted with the League of Nations and with the International Labor Organization in Geneva. She lived in London from 1929 with Dame Katharine Furse of the Red Cross.
In her later years, Mary Parker Follett became a popular writer and lecturer in the business world. She