Management Theory and Practice

Introduction

Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933 , was an early political scientist and is considered to be one of the most prominent American management theorists in the earlier half of the 20th century (Montana Chimov 2000 ,

.17 She is considered to be one of the founders of the field of Public Administration and organization studies . Labeled by many famous management , as the `Prophet of Management ' and the `Mother of Scientific Management , she was a critical and independent thinker who has a powerful impact on the management theory in the 1920s and 1930s (Orlikowski

1996 ,

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Though an American by birth her work was better known in other countries like Britain and Japan . Some theorists attribute this to her being a woman with ideas that were far beyond her time . Another reason why her work did not have as much impact as other management theorists may also be because she worked as a social worker rather than in exalted business circles . Her approach for a social responsibility and working together was also in direct contrast to the use of power and authority , which was prevalent in the times when she was writing and lecturing (Tosi , Mero Rizzo 2001 ,

.11 . The multinational and multicultural expansion of businesses has led to a different nature of roles and responsibilities among the management group . Today many companies are struggling towards corporate social responsibility and the ideas which Ms Follett had introduced years ago are being brought back into the light

The works of Mary Parker became obscure for a long time due to the disinterest among the companies at the time to look for a social responsibility and team work based organization . During her earlier studies , she met Dr . H Metcalf who later published many of her lectures Dr . Metcalf together with Colonel L . Urwick together in the year 1941 assembled her lectures in a book called Dynamic Administration , which forms the basis for many researches looking for Follett 's work (Orlikowski 2003 ,

. 426

The Ideas of Mary Parker Follett

Mary Parker Follett challenged the ideas of scientific management prevalent at the time , and helped in laying foundations to the human relations school of management (Witzel 2003

. 102 . Her idea was to control people by working with them . The industry at that time was completely hierarchical and authority and power were exerted in a military style . Follett however rooted for an entirely different style of management . She advocated for flatter hierarchies , teamwork and participative management leadership based on ability , cooperative conflict resolution and a shared corporate vision (Bloom Reichert 1998 ,

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This may be one of the reasons why her ideas were not immediately accepted in the US , where power games were the mainstay for any type of business . The companies were inherently family businesses and the leadership was the next successor to the family whether worthy or not Teamwork was an unheard of concept , as the management scoffed at it and the subordinates worked solely at the directions of...