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Mary parker follett lost and found - again, and again, and again
Abstract
Coming from a long tradition of Quaker beliefs, Mary Parker Follett advocated for an integrative unity in the organization or state where members work together, consensus is built, and power is shared. She applied her process of integration to management practices in both business and government. Parker Follettʼns communitarian ideas and philosophy of smaller more participative government have often run counter to administration and managementsʼn focus on regulation and centralized power. This has contributed to the benign neglect of Parker Follettʼns work in the administrative and management literature. Parker Follettʼns work has been lost and found repeatedly over the past half century. In the rapidly changing and uncertain times of the new millennium we need once again to rediscover her holistic and healing approach to administration and management.
... Teorija M. P. Follett nije uvijek nailazila na odobravanje. Iako je progresivna era u jednoj mjeri bila pogodna klima za njezine humanističke ideje (Feldheim, 2004), što se očituje uspjehom djela The New State i Creative Experience, dominantna teorija organizacije ipak je ostao znanstveni menadžment te je Follett nedugo nakon smrti pala u zaborav. Orijentacija na centralizaciju i efikasnost u tridesetim i četrdesetim godinama 20. ...
... stoljeća radi oporavka američkog gospodarstva od depresije i sudjelovanja u Drugom svjetskom ratu, umanjila je šanse za prihvaćanje njezinih ideja. U tom kontekstu, one su djelovale radikalno, čak i subverzivno (Feldheim, 2004), budući da se participativna demokracija na lokalnoj razini kakvom je Follett opisuje potpuno kosi s idejom jake centralne vlasti. ...
... Problematičnim se pokazalo i pitanje moguće diskriminacije na temelju spola (Miner, 2006). Jesu li njezine ideje zanemarene zato što je bila žena ili možda zato što je njihov sadržaj uključivao tipično »ženske« vrijednosti, koje se nisu uklapale u sliku menadžmenta kojim dominiraju muškarci (Feldheim, 2004)? Odgovor na to pitanje nije jednostavan. ...
The theory of Mary Parker Follett, an innovative author of the early 20th century, is outlined and her contribution to organisation and management theory is analysed. Her original works are first presented as an overview of the key themes she addressed, which reflect her creative views on managing differences and conflict among people in organisations, as well as her progressive approach to leadership, power, and control. Her theory is then analysed from different aspects. The relation of her theory to other organisation theories is explored, starting with classical organisation theory, of which she is only chronologically part, and moving on to the human relations school and systems theory, as these represent theories that are much more compatible with her works. It is argued that Follett’s view of the complexity of human interactions surpasses that of the human relations school, and her organic approach to control and coordination is identified as being in line with the contemporary theory of complex, adaptive systems. Possible explanations why her theory was not accepted throughout the 20th century are considered along with a sporadic interest in her ideas. The explanations include the difficulty of applying her theory in periods of centralisation, possible gender discrimination, and the lack of technical methods based on empirical research, while the most probable being the idealism that permeates her thought. Criticism aimed at her theory is also assessed, as well as its potential shortcomings. The scope of her influence on the development of modern organisation and management theory is explored, especially in the fields of conflict management, leadership, organisational ethics, human resource management, quality management, and participation. Finally, her relevance to modern organisations is evaluated.
... However, slowly, over the past two decades, an increasing number of scholars and practitioners have discovered-and in some cases rediscovered-her work and have found it compelling and powerful. (Bennis, 1995;Drucker, 1995;Graham, 1995;Kanter, 1995;Mintzberg, 1995;Tonn, 2003) She has been hailed by no less than Peter Drucker as being "the Prophet of Management" (Drucker, 1995) because her ideas both predated (Kanter, 1995) or directly influenced (Bennis, 1995) the fundamental constructs and processes that have emerged in the field of management over the past six decades (Eylon, 1998;Feldheim, 2004;Graham, 1995;Mendenhall, Macomber, & Cutright, 2000;Tonn, 2003). ...
... One proposed rationale for the burial of her work was due to the lack of fit of her ideas with the political and academic climate that emerged shortly after her death in 1933 (Drucker, 1995;Feldheim, 2004;Miller & O'Leary, 1989;Waldo, 1984). Tonn (2003) also noted that because of Follett's gender she was not able to obtain a graduate degree, and thus was not able to operate from the secure foundation of a university. ...
... al., 2000). Perhaps the aspect of her work that has attracted the most attention by current management scholars and practitioners (Davis, 1991;Drucker, 1995;Feldheim, 2004;Fry & Thomas, 1996;McKersic & Walton, 1992) is that of integration: the collaborative combining of differences among group members to invent new realities, which according to Raelin (2006), is a process that lies at the core of the collaborative leadership. ...
The conflict resolution and collective decision-making models of Mary Parker Follett and Joseph Smith are reviewed, with a primary focus on the foundational principle inherent in both models: integration. Commonalities and differences between the models are delineated, and the implications of Follett and Smith's writings for the field are discussed.
... • 'Autorité', 'pouvoir' et 'contrôle' : l'autorité découle de la loi de la situation, elle n'est pas arbitraire mais fonctionnelle et partagée (Follett, 1970, p. 15). Le pouvoir, « relation […ne pouvant] se posséder » (Crozier & Friedberg, 1977, p. 444), n'est pas un pouvoir-sur, mais un pouvoir-avec et un pouvoir-pour créer une solution intégrative (Carlsen et al., 2020;Feldheim, 2003;Stout et al., 2018, p. 101). Il se cultive par contrôle co-actif (Follet in Metcalf et al., 1941, p. 197) en co-ordination « tous ceux qui réalisent une partie fonctionnelle de l'activité » (Follett, 1949, p. 58) 28 . ...
... → Le pouvoir 41 , n'est pas un « pouvoir-sur », mais un « pouvoiravec » et un « pouvoir-pour » créer une solution intégrative (Carlsen et al., 2020;Feldheim, 2003;Stout et al., 2018, p. 101). ...
Abstract:
Since the 2010s, various actors - economic, governmental, civil society - have been advocating a transition towards a circular economy (TCE) in response to societal imbalances and actors’ respective challenges. They face management challenges, all related to cooperation, which are particularly present for the more radical transition towards a circular society (TCS). A preliminary literature review on the collective action of TCE shows the scientific management journals’ lack of interest, and, in particular, that what is crucially at stake is cooperation. This leads to setting down TCS as an organisation issue of collective action, at different territory levels. A second literature review, extended to interdisciplinary journals and theories of collective action, develops a conceptual framework around three theories: institutional change (Greenwood et al., 2002) to study at the macro level the challenge of institutionalisation of the concept; Follettian integrative self-organising (Stout & Love, 2016) at the micro level, for the challenge of the emergence of citizen-actor dynamics; and transition governance (Loorbach, 2017) at the meso level, for the challenge of governance of societal transition. Accompanying research is carried out via unique, embedded, longitudinal case study, from 2015 to 2019, of France, characterised by its territorial approach. According to my subjective posture of a radical constructivism critical as well as of a chrematistic management, I participate with restraint to limit my impact, in mirror image to accompany the actors. Floating attention enables the connection of diverse and abundant material, from which surface salient facts. They are processed by textual analysis and put into varied and abductive perspectives. Each challenge studies one level of the case, and is the subject of a paper of this paper-based thesis. The first paper studies the institutionalisation of the concept, and carries out an in-depth linguistic, semantic and contextualised analysis (Seignour, 2011) of a corpus of 20 texts representative of national level French discourse from 2008 to 2017. This paper shows that the French TCE apparatus indicates a CE in the process of theorisation, mobilising a wide range of actors and contributing to a process of societal change to take into account the impact of economic activity on nature. The second paper studies at the micro level, the emerging of TCS citizen-actor dynamics, and develops an accompanying research on a TCS project by a self-organising collective of citizen-actors. It highlights a dynamic surfacing from the need to cooperate at increasingly complex levels, to make practices consistent with values, and the co-design of a TCS project, resulting from an integrative self-organising loop process. Finally, a third paper studies, at the meso level in accompanying research, the governance challenges of a territory TCE, by a governmental body. This shows a governmental body taking up these challenges, by becoming facilitator of a self-organising network, but maintaining its responsibility and power and without co-constructing with citizen-actor initiatives. These results converge towards an essential role for self-organising in the face of the organisational challenges of TCE, which in fact becomes TCS, to adapt society to self-organising. Then, these results open up varied research paths: towards an object-frontier CE of transition between diverse actors, with the actor-network theory (ANT); the researcher’s central role in an eco-management transition (Avenier, 1993, 2016); an integrative mobilisation of TCS around societal values with the Follettian theory revisiting ANT; an experimentation of TCS governance with the X-scheme (Hebinck et al, 2022) and various theories, such as Ostrom's for the construction of laws and Follett's for the emergence of dynamics.
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Résumé :
Depuis les années 2010, divers acteurs – économiques, instances gouvernementales, société civile – prônent une transition vers une économie circulaire (TVEC) en réponse aux déséquilibres sociétaux et à leurs enjeux respectifs. Ils rencontrent des défis de management, tous liés à la coopération, particulièrement présents pour la transition vers une société circulaire (TVSC), plus radicale. Une première revue de littérature sur l’action collective de TVEC, montre notamment l’enjeu crucial de coopération et le manque d’intérêt des revues scientifiques de gestion. Elle conduit à poser la TVSC comme problématique d’organisation de l’action collective, à différents niveaux de territoire. Une seconde revue de littérature, élargie à des revues interdisciplinaires et aux théories de l’action collective, développe un cadre conceptuel autour de trois théories : le changement institutionnel (Greenwood et al., 2002) pour étudier le défi d’institutionnalisation du concept, au niveau macro ; l’auto-organisation intégrative Follettienne (Stout & Love, 2016), pour le défi d’émergence de dynamiques de citoyens-acteurs, au niveau micro ; et la gouvernance de transition (Loorbach, 2017), pour le défi de gouvernance de transition sociétale, au niveau méso. Une recherche-accompagnement est menée par l’étude longitudinale, de 2015 à 2019, du cas unique imbriqué de la France, caractérisée par son approche territoriale. Selon ma posture subjective de constructivisme radical, et critique d’une gestion chrématistique, je participe avec retenue pour limiter mon impact, positionnée en miroir pour accompagner les acteurs. L’attention flottante permet de collecter un matériau divers, abondant, d’où émergent des faits saillants. Ils sont traités par analyses textuelles et mises en perspectives variées et abductives. Chaque défi étudie un niveau du cas, par un essai de cette thèse sur essais. Le premier essai étudie l’institutionnalisation de l’EC, il réalise une analyse en profondeur, linguistique, sémantique et contextualisée (Seignour, 2011) d’un corpus de 20 textes représentatifs du discours français au niveau national de 2008 et 2017. Il montre que le dispositif français de TVEC indique une EC en cours de théorisation, mobilisant un large panel d’acteurs et contribuant à un processus de changement sociétal de prise en compte de l’impact de l’activité économique sur la nature. Le second essai étudie, au niveau micro, l’émergence de dynamiques de citoyens-acteurs de TVSC, il développe une recherche-accompagnement sur un projet de TVSC par un collectif auto-organisé de citoyens-acteurs. Il met en lumière une dynamique émergeant de besoins de coopérer à des niveaux de plus en plus complexes, pour mettre en cohérence des pratiques avec des valeurs, et la co-conception d’un projet de TVSC, résultant d’un processus par boucles d’auto-organisation intégrative. Enfin, un troisième essai étudie, en recherche-accompagnement, au niveau méso, les défis de gouvernance de la TVEC d’un territoire, par une instance gouvernementale. Il montre une instance gouvernementale relevant ces défis, en devenant animatrice de réseau auto-organisé, mais en conservant responsabilité et pouvoir, et sans coconstruire avec les initiatives de citoyens-acteurs. Ces résultats convergent vers un rôle essentiel de l’auto-organisation face aux défis d’organisation de la TVEC, qui, de fait, devient TVSC pour adapter la société à l’auto-organisation. Ils ouvrent des pistes de recherche : vers une EC objet-frontière de transition entre acteurs divers, avec la théorie de l’acteur réseau (ANT) ; un rôle central du chercheur dans une transition par l’éco-management (Avenier, 1993, 2016) ; une mobilisation intégrative de TVSC autour de valeurs sociétales avec la théorie Follettienne revisitant l’ANT ; une expérimentation de gouvernance de TVSC avec le schéma en X (Hebinck et al., 2022) et diverses théories, comme celle d’Ostrom pour construire les lois et de Follett pour l’émergence des dynamiques.
... Öncelikle bir siyaset bilimci (Wren, 2005: 301) ve sosyal hizmet uygulamacısı olan Follett'ın yönetim düşüncesinde bu alt yapının önemli bir etkisi vardır. Follett yönetim alanına bütüncül ve aynı zamanda hümanist bir yaklaşımla bakabilen öncü bir figürdür (Feldheim, 2004). Belki de bu nedenle Follet'ın ortaya koyduğu yönetim düşüncesi büyük veya küçük, özel veya kamu, ulusal veya uluslararası ayrımı olmaksızın tüm gruplara yöneliktir (Graham, 1995: viii). ...
... Devam eden bölümde bu unutulmuşluğun nedenleri ve Follett hakkında yazılanlar üzerinde durulacaktır. Urwick ve Brech (1947/1956) Mary Parker Follett'ı yönetim alanındaki 13 öncü isim arasında değerlendirmektedir. Mary Parker Follett 'en çok kaybedilen ve sürekli yeniden keşfedilen yönetim düşünürüdür' şeklinde bir önerme ise abartılı bulunmamalıdır (Feldheim, 2004). Mary Parker Follett'ın fikirleri ve eserleri o kadar değerli ise neden yıllarca görmezden gelindi? ...
The purpose of this paper is to describe Mary Parker Follett’s (1868-1933) management thinking based on propositions. During her lifetime, Mary Parker Follett, a remarkable management thinker, managed to become one of the pioneers of the field of management. Following her death, she could not reserve deserved attention from the field of management and her ideas on management almost vanished. Fortunately, her ideas on management were rediscovered during the 90s, and they started to guide contemporary scholars thereafter. Follett never had a substantial place in management literature in Turkey neither during her heydays nor during her renaissance in the 1990s. This paper delineates Follett’s management thinking through propositions such as circular response, constructive conflict, common power, conditional order, leadership by followers, and cross-functional interaction, and hence it attempts to support Turkish scholars’ academic endeavors to benefit from Follett’s inspirational ideas. © 2018 Turkiye ortadogu amme idares ienstitusu. All Rights Reserved.
... Follett is most well-known today in the fields of business management and public administration (Feldheim, 2003;Fry & Raadschelders, 2014;Graham, 1995;Morse, 2006;Stout & Love, 2015). Those scholars are captivated mainly by a series of presentations she delivered at business management conferences late in her career, which were collected and published as an anthology after her passing (Follett, 2013(Follett, [1941). ...
Most participatory strands of democratic theory hold a conception of the transformative potential of democratic participation. According to those theories, involvement in deliberative or decision-making processes makes better citizens by teaching them political skills and orienting them towards the common good. This article draws from original interviews with residents of housing coops to argue that this phenomenon can also be found outside formal decision-making forums, in menial and quotidian tasks undertaken for the preservation and maintenance of the organization. Using the political theory of Mary Parker Follett, we suggest that involvement in practical concrete activities is an overlooked but significant element of democratic life. Residents of the coops we studied grew ‘power-with’ by joining others in accomplishing everyday tasks, such as blowing snow, gardening, or fixing shelves, and this collective power made them feel responsible for the organization they were a part of. Broadening our understanding of political participation to include those practical activities could be useful in assessing and devising plans for participatory reforms in small-scale local democracies, but also possibly at a larger scale that would produce the benefits of participation without requiring individuals to overly engage in demanding and complex procedures.
... Thus, SMEs should establish knowledge, manage enterprise resources, and understand the customers and markets to enable the exploitation and exploration of innovative opportunities that can facilitate enhanced business performance. The connection of the parts of the DIM with the thoughts of change management theory, ideas of Feldheim (2003), and the organisation theory views of Mary Parker Follett establishes key insight of the analysis and advocates new direction for future research. The illustrated insight shares the need for businesses to adapt, learn, and transform in alignment with the business environment. ...
Purpose: Ambidextrous SME innovations and technology models have led to success stories in the past. They face new challenges due to increasing uncertainty in the business environment. Purpose: The study reviews ambidexterity literature to determine trends and themes existing in the body of literature on ambidexterity.
Design/methodology/approach: The study employed a bibliometric and Vosviewer analysis of 1808 articles published on Scopus database from 1999–2022. The study used several indicators including data overview (scientific production in the area and three field-plot), conceptual structure (co-occurrence network, thematic map, and evolution), keyword analysis, and thematic mapping.
Findings/results: The analysis indicated five main themes on which the ambidexterity literature focuses. The results revealed that the key themes in ambidexterity literature are continuous innovation, knowledge management, dynamic capabilities, entrepreneurial and market orientation, enterprise resource management (ERM), and business performance.
Practical implications: The review highlighted that SMEs struggle more in dynamic business environments. Business changes in recent years have proved the importance of innovation, ERM, knowledge management, and dynamic capabilities as beneficial factors for achieving enhanced performance.
Originality/value: The analysis reveals several links in literature and valuable insights into possible models that can be scaled up and replicated across different industries. Themes in the domain mainly focussed on knowledge management, firm performance, digital transformation, open innovation, dynamic capabilities as well as entrepreneurial and marketing orientation The proposed business model can assist SMEs owners and managers in swiftly adapting to unpredictability in the changing business climate caused by the recent pattern of events.
... The foundations of this approach are closely aligned to Parker-Follet's conception of integration and collaborative, shared leadership (5). These conceptualisations have continuously emerged and re-emerged in organisational, management and leadership theory since first being published in the 1920s (6)(7)(8). ...
Through a systematic reflection on the journey that transformed traditional state-run baby homes in Tajikistan from closed institutions into community-oriented Family and Child Support Centres (FCSC) we reveal key moments of change. This review describes how community consultation with local participants in a development project shifted responsibility and accountability from international to local ownership and how distributed leadership contributes to the decolonisation of social services. Based on these interviews we ask, ‘How do the innovations of a social development project become a fixed part of normal local social, cultural and political life; and, how do we know when a new normal is self-sustaining at a local level?’ This analysis builds on a network-mapping tool previously described in this journal. Our interviews show that each participant has taken a non-linear journey, building on the networks previously described, under the influence of activities and discussions that emerged throughout the project. We consider how a monitoring, evaluation, and learning process should be responsive over time to these influences, rather than be set at the start of the project. Using the themes that emerge from participants’ journeys, we apply a ‘measurement for change’ (M4C) approach that integrates Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) into decision-making. The journey framework applied represents a systematic application of the M4C approach that gives us insight into where local ownership is responsible for the sustainable management of the intervention, and where continued partnership will further strengthen impact and accountability. The exercise has provided evidence of progress towards decolonisation and of the centring of local priorities in MEL and implementation processes.
... For example, management scholars described her ideas as "superbly relevant" (Drucker, 1995;Fox and Urwick, 1973) and have applied her thinking to domains within strategy and organizational research (e.g. Barclay, 2005;Schilling, 2000) in varied ways at different times (Bednarek et al., 2020;Calás and Smircich, 1996;Feldheim, 2003). ...
Scholars increasingly turn to paradox theory to offer insight into our world’s greatest challenges. Yet to contribute to radical strategy theorizing concerning those challenges and avoid premature convergence on a narrow set of ideas, paradox scholars need new insights. We turn to early 20th century scholar and activist Mary Parker Follett. We highlight the alignment between Follett’s philosophy and contemporary paradox theory, showing that the two approaches are well-suited traveling companions. Drawing on these similarities, we then explore how Follett’s novel insights emphasize ‘what is’ rather than ‘what may be’ and in doing so challenge and expand on paradox theory. Specifically, these ideas help paradox theory reimagining of organizations and strategizing by focusing on 1) how the micro constructs the macro; 2) possibilities for meaningful change; and 3) participatory interactions. By doing so, we argue that Follet pushes paradox scholars to contribute to more radical strategy theorizing.
... Zuffo (2011) supported this notion that Taylor's principles of scientific management were purely concern for effective organisation more than process or people. Feldheim (2004) portrayed classical theorist, Mary Parker Follet and her contributions to management thoughts as driven by consideration for people and organisation. Coming from political background she was interested in stability of society and organisation by managing conflict at a level where it does not generate to social disorder (Kuznetsova, 2013). ...
Each successive theory has shaped the scope of management thoughts into a complex phenomenon but
the theories can be decomposed into concerned for people, management and organisation. The study focused on the
relationship between these elements and how they have shaped management thoughts overtime. It is an exploration of the
concepts of management thoughts through qualitative research design. The study revealed that management thoughts can be understood on the bases of concerns
for people, management and organisations. These basic elements are interdependent but together they function to
achieve one unified purpose of satisfying human’s needs. Therefore people, organisation and
management should be the focus of all management thoughts including organisational design, and should be tailored
towards satisfying human’s needs.
Keywords: People, management, organisation, management thoughts
... One theory as to why Follett's work has gone underappreciated for so long, especially in America, is the American penchant to adopt management "gurus" and the latest fads and innovations of the day (Feldheim 2004;Parker and Ritson 2005). Why look backward to Follett when one should look forward? ...
The work of Mary Parker Follett, an intellectual pioneer of the early twentieth century, resists categorization or assignment to any one category or field of study. A political and management theorist, Follett proposed a renewed vision of participative democracy as she anticipated the future practice of conflict mediation and of management as a profession.Follett’s work, rooted in her integrative philosophy of addressing conflict and problems, is particularly and perennially relevant to managing change. The following chapter first presents the profound influences of Follett’s academic, personal, and professional experiences in shaping her perspectives. We then delve into what we view as Follett’s most important, enduring contributions to management study and practice – integration and circular response – as a paradigm for managing change. We highlight different contexts in which Follett has translated her integrative philosophy into practical concepts, such as power-with management, the law of the situation, the invisible leader and the common purpose, and circular behavior as the basis of integration. We will conclude this collective reflection by illustrating how Follett’s legacy is unfinished; her ideas endure and are relevant even today in governing our period of complexity and interdependent challenges. Follett still shows the way.
... One theory as to why Follett's work has gone underappreciated for so long, especially in America, is the American penchant to adopt management "gurus" and the latest fads and innovations of the day (Feldheim 2004;Parker and Ritson 2005). Why look backward to Follett when one should look forward? ...
The work of Mary Parker Follett, an intellectual pioneer of the early twentieth century, resists categorization or assignment to any one category or field of study. A political and management theorist, Follett proposed a renewed vision of participative democracy as she anticipated the future practice of conflict mediation and of management as a profession.
Follett’s work, rooted in her integrative philosophy of addressing conflict and problems, is particularly and perennially relevant to managing change. The following chapter first presents the profound influences of Follett’s academic, personal, and professional experiences in shaping her perspectives. We then delve into what we view as Follett’s most important, enduring contributions to management study and practice – integration and circular response – as a paradigm for managing change. We highlight different contexts in which Follett has translated her integrative philosophy into practical concepts, such as power-with management, the law of the situation, the invisible leader and the common purpose, and circular behavior as the basis of integration. We will conclude this collective reflection by illustrating how Follett’s legacy is unfinished; her ideas endure and are relevant even today in governing our period of complexity and interdependent challenges. Follett still shows the way.
... One theory as to why Follett's work has gone underappreciated for so long, especially in America, is the American penchant to adopt management "gurus" and the latest fads and innovations of the day (Feldheim 2004;Parker and Ritson 2005). Why look backward to Follett when one should look forward? ...
The work of Mary Parker Follett, an intellectual pioneer of the early twentieth century, resists categorization or assignment to any one category or field of study. A political and management theorist, Follett proposed a renewed vision of participative democracy as she anticipated the future practice of conflict mediation and of management as a profession.
Follett’s work, rooted in her integrative philosophy of addressing conflict and problems, is particularly and perennially relevant to managing change. The following chapter first presents the profound influences of Follett’s academic, personal, and professional experiences in shaping her perspectives. We then delve into what we view as Follett’s most important, enduring contributions to management study and practice – integration and circular response – as a paradigm for managing change. We highlight different contexts in which Follett has translated her integrative philosophy into practical concepts, such as power-with management, the law of the situation, the invisible leader and the common purpose, and circular behavior as the basis of integration. We will conclude this collective reflection by illustrating how Follett’s legacy is unfinished; her ideas endure and are relevant even today in governing our period of complexity and interdependent challenges. Follett still shows the way.
... One theory as to why Follett's work has gone underappreciated for so long, especially in America, is the American penchant to adopt management "gurus" and the latest fads and innovations of the day (Feldheim 2004;Parker and Ritson 2005). Why look backward to Follett when one should look forward? ...
This article examines the “new professions” as alternative settings where women thought and wrote about the international. Presenting the case studies of Fannie Fern Andrews, Mary Parker Follett and Florence Wilson, it shows that, in emerging professional and disciplinary contexts that have hitherto lain beyond the purview of historians of international thought, these women developed their thinking about the international. The insights they derived from their practical work in schools, immigrant communities and libraries led them to emphasize the mechanics of participation in international affairs and caused them to think across the scales of the individual, the local group and relations between nations. By moving beyond the history of organizations and networks and instead looking for the professional settings and audiences which enabled women to theorize, this article shifts both established understandings of what counts as international thought and traditional conceptions of who counts as an international thinker.
The use of Vital Signs, an annual community report card, by community foundations.
El presente artículo aborda el surgimiento de la literatura gerencial dirigida espe cíficamente a mujeres como respuesta al creciente papel de dicho grupo en la gestión de las organizaciones. En primer lugar, se tratarán las bases discursivas de la literatura gerencial en su acepción general. En segundo lugar, se reflexionará en torno a la escasa visibilidad de las mujeres como creadoras de la literatura popular del management, y se identificarán algunas de las pocas figuras femeninas que se podrían considerar dentro de esta categoría. En tercer lugar, se abordará el principal proceso que da lugar al surgimiento de un subgénero de la lite ratura gerencial dirigido de forma concreta a mujeres. Por último, se tratará de abordar el prin cipal discurso sobre el liderazgo de las mujeres contenido en esta literatura y sus implicaciones éticas para el surgimiento de la igualdad de género en las organizaciones empresariales. Palabras clave: literatura gerencial, género, modas de gestión, ética.
Reflections about the ontological foundation probe into the nature of society and subsequently into the nature of enterprises. The chapter shows how certain social theories have dominated and shaped perspectives on society and in turn on enterprises, inevitably leading to enterprise mechanization. Important concepts that capture the essence of society and enterprises are thereby largely ignored with detrimental consequences. Unlike the mechanistic perspective with its associated deterministic essence, the chapter stresses the importance of acknowledging and understanding emergence: the occurrence of unpredictable, novel phenomena in social and enterprise reality. Core sources and forces of those phenomena are outlined, as well as their profound implications for conceptualizing society and enterprises. Subsequent to outlining the conceptual model of society, the conceptual model of enterprises will be introduced, which reflects the essential facets of enterprises, aids in understanding emergence, and enables coherent and consistent enterprise design as a vital condition for adequate enterprise operational and strategic performance. Implications of the ontological foundation for enterprise governance and enterprise engineering will be sketched.
The postwar literature has yielded important insights regarding developing collaborative leadership competencies in managers and collaborative leadership systems within organizations. However, the work of pre—World War II scholars and practitioners in this area has largely been overlooked. After introductory “interviews” with Mary P. Follett and Joseph Smith, we review their frameworks of collaborative leadership. Drawing on their frameworks of collaborative leadership, the authors propose an extension to Raelin’s (2006) framework of collaborative leadership and discuss the implications of this extended framework for current efforts in developing collaborative leadership in organizations
Although certainly not mainstream to the study of public administration, administrative history in the United States has quite a tradition. In this article, the development of the study of the history of American government is traced in five phases and discussed against the background of political and social change in society. The various studies are evaluated in terms of the themes, the nature, and the approach. Combining the “history as history” and the “history as advocacy” approaches would clarify why administrative history ought to be a standard element in our research and teaching.
Legitimacy, the place of public administration in governance, has always been a concern in American society. Responses to this concern have included efforts to control bureaucracy by defining what it should do, to free it from control by elevating its status in relation to other branches of government, and to confine it to micro-level, market-like management techniques. The discourse theory of O. C. McSwite, based on pragmatism, suggests that governmental legitimacy in America may be revived by shifting from an emphasis on the public administrator’s role in directing agencies to thinking about how administrators may assist in creating community through collaboration with citizens. This article offers a critique and extension of McSwite’s work based in part on critical theory, arguing that to recover administrative legitimacy through collaborative discourse, it may be necessary to recognize and respond to the nature of the liberal-capitalist political environment.
One of the few issues on which public management scholars agree in theory is the centrality of the democratic ethos. Public policy has recently paid attention to more democratic forms of policy making (e.g., participatory policy analysis), and public administration has periodically studied and advocated increased citizen participation in the processes of government. But the field of public management scholarship has yet to make a similar commitment to the democratic ethos, despite some contemporary practices (flattened hierarchies, self-managing teams) that represent democratization in public organizations. This essay reviews reasons why public management should be more democratic, some ways in which it is not, and proposes some ways in which the focus of scholarship and practice should be directed.
How can good listening help public administrators be more responsive to the public? In public administration, responsibility is lauded as the essence of bureaucratic professionalism while responsiveness tends to connote inappropriate political bias. Yet too much reliance on administrators' sense of responsibility threatens democratic accountability and puts too much faith in bureaucratic expertise. This article argues that practicing responsiveness by developing the ability to listen skillfully reduces the tension between administrative effectiveness and democratic accountability. The experience of listening involves openness, respect for difference, and reflexivity. Developing the capacity to listen well promotes accountability by helping administrators to hear neglected voices and engage in reciprocal communication with the public; it promotes effectiveness by deepening our understanding of complex situations and facilitating imaginative approaches.
Mary Follett's contribution to the science of management and administration spanned the years between 1918 and 1933. She developed ideas much in advance of her time, many of which are only now beginning to be appreciated. Despite a nontechnical, almost simplistic terminology and a highly unsystematic style of exposition, she developed a theory of human interaction of considerable depth that retains a remarkable consistency over a wide range of applications. Her frequently cited admonition to follow the law of the situation is based on a concept of the "situation" as a whole complex of reciprocally related interactions which are by their very nature constantly evolving and changing, thus giving both the occasion and the opportunity for continual efforts to keep the process healthy. Integration, the name of the healthy process, is a means of bringing differences together so as to create a new synthesis. The "law" of the situation means acting in accord with present integrations and anticipating those that still need to be made. The theory has practical applications in the areas of order giving, conflict resolution, the exercise of authority and leadership, the proper use of expertise, the coordination of individuals and departments in an organization, and much else.
In recent years various theories of “democratic administration” have been developed. These theories differ in their origins, their motivation, their sophistication. Some have been crudely forged in the heat of administration; some are finely-machined products of scholarship. Some pertain especially to private administration, others have been developed for public administration, while still others cut across this conventional division.
These theories of democratic administration constitute a significant development in political thought. However crude and limited some of them may be, they open new areas to be explored in the development of democratic ideology; whatever their limitations, they are constructive efforts to adapt an ethic in which we believe to the contemporary world. If administration is indeed “the core of modern government,” then a theory of democracy in the twentieth century must embrace administration. I wish to sketch the background of administrative thought and history against which theories of democratic administration are seen in perspective; to review briefly some of these theories; and to comment upon the prospects and problems of the further development of theory of democratic administration.
This article argues that radical democratic thought, although to a large extent theoretically ignored in public administration, has an important role to play in raising critical issues that are interwoven with the political and economic fabric of society itself. Specifically, it contends that radical thought challenges the field to reconceptualize the role of democratic citizenship in a modern polity and to rethink the theoretical and intellectual development of public administration theory.
In this article, the authors interpret the work of Mary Parker Follett, a well-known but underappreciated theorist of public administration. In a formal philosophical analysis organized around the traditional categories of ontology, epistemology, and ethics, they relate contemporary feminist theory to Follett slife experiences and writings, particularly those on democratic and organization theory. Besides making a case for the interpretation of Follett as a feminist thinker, the authors also relate her work to contemporary trends in theories of public administration and management. Finally, they argue that in addition to being a precursor to these trends, Follett's work may help scholars of public administration build a coherent theoretical foundation for public administration in general, a foundation that may find a strong theoretical link to contemporary feminism.
This study tested a structural equations model of the five French and Raven bases of supervisory power (coercive, reward, legitimate, expert, and referent), styles of handling conflict with supervisor (problem solving and bargaining), and job performance. Employees (N = 1,116) completed questionnaires on power and conflict styles, and their job performance was evaluated by their respective supervisors (N = 398). The data were aggregated for the subordinates associated with a given manager (N = 398) to make sure that independent observation assumption is not violated. The LISREL 8 analysis of data indicates that legitimate power influenced referent power positively and coercive power negatively, and reward and legitimate powers positively influenced expert power, which in turn, positively influenced referent power. Referent power, in turn, positively influenced problem solving (i.e., using more integrating and less avoiding styles) and negatively influenced bargaining (i.e., using more dominating and less obliging styles) conflict-management styles, and finally, problem solving style, but not bargaining style, positively influenced job performance.
This article portrays the pragmatism of Charles S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey as an insignificant influence during the early years of American public administration. The mainstream thinking during that time was exemplified by the ideas of Charles A. Beard, an influential figure in the early era of the field. Beard’s writings illustrate the way public administration ignored important aspects of pragmatism in favor of practical attitudes and focus on apolitical efficiency. As a result, administrative orthodoxy developed in opposition to pragmatism, which explains the abandonment and misinterpretation of Mary Parker Follett’s ideas. Equipped with the recognition that public administration has never really given pragmatism a chance, scholars and practitioners may be led to consider its possibilities in a contemporary administrative context.
There are inherent tensions between traditional, more pluralist forms of public participation and new deliberative democratic processes, such as citizens’ juries. These innovative processes, known collectively as citizens’ forums, challenge existing roles and power relationships between interest groups and the state. Instead of having key access to the policy stage, interest groups are required to be ‘bystanders’, ‘information providers’, and ultimately ‘process legitimisers’. With such a radical shift in roles and power structure, there are few apparent reasons why interest groups would want to participate in such deliberative processes. In some cases, to the detriment of the process, they decide not to.
Two challenges are posed for social scientists, one substantive and the other disciplinary. First, scholars and practitioners should together find ways to transform fragmented and conflictual relationships into relationships capable of building peaceful societies where human dignity is respected. Second, to achieve this goal, they should work to develop non-disciplinary spaces where people from different disciplines can come together to create the requisite conceptual and methodological frameworks.
Increasingly the makeup of the top management group is believed to affect the development, identification and exploitation of strategic opportunities. This paper explains a creative management model, which goes beyond conventional strategic management, and identifies the behaviors of top managers needed for the ongoing renewal of their business. It is proposed these behaviors cluster and can be aligned with different and distinct cognitive styles or types. The implication is that top management groups should be composed of a mix of types. This paper posits a mix of Jungian types, Intuitives, Feelers, Thinkers and Sensors. This diversity can yield great strength if the differences can be focused and unified. Propositions and suggestions for further empirical research are developed.
Over the past seven years an explosion of feminist scholarship in international relations has brought to light the key roles played by women in the constitution of international politics. Both empirical and theoretical work has demonstrated the centrality of the social construction of gender within international relations, a realm almost always marked as masculine. The new literature on gender challenges the field to develop a greater methodological pluralism and to shift its object of study from state-to-state relations to the more complex network of global social relations, of which international relations is only a small part. The impact of contemporary globalization suggests that the insight provided by feminist analysis would be particularly welcome at this time. Yet, in the past, perhaps because international relations is so closely connected to the masculine-marked realm of military conflict, the field has neither welcomed or remembered its feminist innovators, some of whom are recalled here. Copyright 1996 by MIT Press.
- Davis A. M.
Mary Parker Follett In American Council of Learned Societies,Dictionaryof American Biography (Supplements 1-2: to 1940) (pp.1944-1958) (Reproduced inHistory Resource Center) Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group
- F T Persons
- Parker L.D.