Mary Parker Follett's Management Thought

Abstract

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.