Re: Mary Parker Follett...
Sitting in front of me are two books I prize greatly. One is "Papers on
the Science of Administration" (1937), edited by Luther Gulick and Lionel
Urwick. The book is a classic and the editors are legends. In this book
is a paper by Mary Parker Follett: "The Process of Control." In it she
makes two comments related to your postings of her comments about power
(p.161):
(1) control is coming more and more to mean fact-control rather tham
man-control.
(2) central control is coming more and more to mean the correlation of
many controls rather than a superimposed control.
Ms. Follett was way, way ahead of her time. The world is only just now
catching up to her thinking.
The second of the two books is "Dynamic Administration: The collected
papers of Mary Parker Follett," edited by Henry Metcalf and Lionel Urwick.
In this book can be found this quote from the first in a series of paper
presented to the London School of Economics in 1933 (the year of her
death) and in which she set forth her three reasons for studying business
management (pp.17-18):
First of all, it is among business men (not all, but a few) that I
find the greatest vitality of thinking to-day, and I like to do my
thinking where it is most alive.
Another reason is because industry is the most important field of
human activity, and management is the fundamental element in industry.
The third reason why I am working at business management is because
I believe in control, and so do our most progressive business men.
She continued...
I believe in the individual not trusting to face or chance or
inheritance or environment, but learning how to control his own life.
And nowhere do I see such a complete acceptance of this as in business
thinking, the thinking of more progressive business men. They are
taking the mysticism out of business. They do not believe that there
is anything fatalistic about the business cycle that is wholly beyond
the comprehension of men; they believe that it can be studied and to
some extent controlled.
She was, in her own way, a very hard-nosed businessperson, a believer in
the desirability and value of control but, at the same time, a believer in
self-control, that is, control from within not control from without.
Thanks for reminding us all of a very important and as yet not fully
acknowledged great thinker in the field of management.
Regards,
Fred Nickols
The Distance Consulting Company
nickols@worldnet.att.net
http://home.att.net/~nickols/distance.htm
"The Internet offers the best graduate-level education
to be found anywhere."
[Host's Note:
There is a 1987 edition of Gulick & Urwick, but it too is out of print.
Amazon.com may be able to find a copy...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0824082060
No hints about the second book. The link above appears in association with
Amazon.com. ...Rick]
--Fred Nickols <nickols@worldnet.att.net>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>