Organization and democracy: Mary Parker Follett and the science of administration

This study is an inquiry into Mary Parker Follett's science of administration. It focuses on Follett's understanding of science, her analysis of power, and her desire to make use of the talents and skills of all workers within organizations. It is a science of administration concerned with worker empowerment. Recognizing that we are all products of time, place, and circumstance, the study also examines the philosophical foundations of Follett's education, the prevailing understanding of science and scientific method at the end of the nineteenth century, and Progressive Era criticisms of then-existing governmental-administrative deficiencies. This contextual setting is followed by a discussion of how Follett's work from the first third of the twentieth century continues to have relevance to organizational scholarship in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It is a discussion that focuses on Follett as a progenitor of contemporary research on feminism, gender equality, and many other aspects of organizational and administrative thought.;Follett's life is also examined, but in a carefully circumscribed way. This is not a biographical study. It is focused, instead, on specific stages of Follett's life as they relate to her scholarship, social activism, and the intersections between her experiences and the development of her scholarship. In like fashion, there is an examination of the nexus between religious thought and the ideology of scientific management, focusing specifically upon religion and the acceptance of the ideology of scientific management (as was the case with New Thought) or resistance to that ideology (as was the case with Quakerism). The study concludes by examining the nature of "science" in Follett's science of administration, her advocacy of a scientific method of research to advance the understanding of power, and the utility of scientific approaches to developing organizational empowerment in the broader pursuit of an increasingly democratic society.