Mary Parker Follett
1868 to 1933
Mary Parker Follett was an American social worker, political thinker and, late in life, an adviser to businesses on both sides of the Atlantic. She ran community centres in Boston, wrote The New State on democracy, and then Creative Experience on what happens between people who disagree.
Management theory rediscovered her decades after her death: the idea that a conflict can be integrated rather than won, and that power is something people build together, came from her. She wrote as a thinker who had spent years in rooms where real decisions were made.
