Power, Freedom and Authority in Management: Mary Parker Follett’s ‘Power-With’

Philosophy of Management

Volumn 3, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 35-46

  Melé, Domènec ^a   Rosanas, Josep M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NAVARRA   (Spain)

Author keywords

Business Firm; Harvard Business School; Integrative Unity; Legitimate Power; Management Volume

Indexed keywords

EID: 84856592647     PISSN: 17403812     EISSN: 20529597     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/pom20033221     Document Type: Article

References (84)

1. See, eg, D McClelland and D Burnham ‘Power is the Great Motivator’ Harvard Business Review (March- April 1976) reprinted Jan-Feb 1995 pp 2–11; J Pfeffer and G Salancick The External Control of Organizations New York, Harper and Row 1978; and J Pfeffer Managing with Power: Politics and Influence in Organizations Boston, Harvard Business School Press 1992
2. A short biography of M P Follett can be found in A Gabor The Capitalist Philosophers. The Geniuses of Modern Business — Their Lives, Times and Ideas New York, Crown Business 2000 pp 45–64
3. Her main works in management are: Dynamic Administration. The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett (edited by H C Metcalf and L Urwick) New York-London, Harper & Brothers 1940 (our quotations); a 2nd ed was published by Pitman, London 1973. Freedom & Co-ordination. Lectures in Business Organization, edited, with an Introduction, by L Urwick New York-London, Garland Publishing 1987 (originally published by Management Publications Trust, London 1949). They will be mentioned respectively as DA and FC. She was not at first interested in management in itself. Her first book was titled The Speaker of the House of Representatives, where her interest was in looking at the political process, including cooperation, one of her key subjects. Her next book was The New State: Group Organization, the Solution of Popular Government Philadelphia, Pennsylvania State University Press 1998 (originally published by Peter Smith, Gloucester, Mass 1918). This book was more ambitious in scope, but again it was not on management as such, but more on Political Science and an expression of how democracy should work for the citizens. Afterwards she wrote Creative Experience London, Longmans Green and Co 1930 (originally published in 1924) which is a psychological approach to society with some philosophical discussions. These last two books will be mentioned as NS and CE respectively
4. P Graham (ed) Mary Parker Follett: Prophet of Management. A Celebration of Writings from 1920s (Introduction by Peter Drucker) Boston, Harvard Business School Press 1995
5. P F Drucker ‘Introduction Mary Parker Follett: Prophet of Management’ loc cit 1995 p 4
6. Loc cit pp 4–7
7. ‘What is the central problem of social relations? It is the question of power; this is the problem of industry, of politics, of international affairs.’ (CE p xii)
8. Literally she says: ‘… our task is not to learn where to place power; it is how to develop power.’ (CE p xii)
9. F W Taylor The Principles of Scientific Management Mineola, Dover Publications 1998 (original edition: New York, Harper and Brothers 1911)
10. H Fayol Administration Industrielle et Générale Paris, Dunod 1916
11. Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick Papers on the Science of Administration New York, Institute of Public Administration, Columbia University 1937
12. See Taylor loc cit chapter 2
13. ‘.. This seems to be rather rough talk. And indeed it would be if applied to an educated mechanic, or an intelligent laborer. With a man of the mentally sluggish type of Schmidt it is appropriate and not unkind, since it is effective in fixing his attention on the high wages which he wants, and away from what, if it were called to his attention, he probably would consider impossible hard work’ (Taylor loc cit 1998 p 19)
14. Explicitly she writes: ‘..cooperation is not…/…merely a matter of good intentions, of kindly feeling. It must be based on these, but you cannot have successful cooperation until you have worked out the methods of cooperation, by experiment after experiment, by a comparing of experiments, by a pooling of results.. It is my plea above everything else that we learn how to cooperate..’ In ‘Management as a Profession’ (1927) in: Michael T Matteson and John M Ivancevich (eds) Management Classics Chapter 2 (Third Edition) Plano, Business Publications 1986
15. ‘Those political scientists who use the words power, control and authority as synonymous, are confusing our thinking.’ (DA p 111)
16. DA p 99
17. J M Ivancevich and M Matteson Organizational Behavior and Management (Fourth edition) Chicago, Richard D Irwin 1996 p 362
18. CE p 181
19. DA p 101
20. DA p 103
21. DA p 101
22. DA p 115
23. FC p 24
24. CE p 187
25. DA p 105
26. DA p 115
27. CE p 189
28. CE p 186
29. CE p 193
30. CE p 189
31. DA p 57
32. DA p 62 Very often she expresses her thoughts through anecdotes or by using the voice of others. That is what she does on this point
33. FC p 36
34. CE p 187
35. CE p 192–193
36. CE p xiii
37. DA p 105
38. CE p 111
39. DA p 44
40. CE p 73
41. CE p 73
42. DA p 45
43. CE p 63
44. We appreciate this suggestion from Nigel Laurie
45. See CE p 50 and pp 91ff
46. The rough meaning of the German term ‘Gestalt’ is holistic patterns or configurations
47. About Gestalt theory see, eg, Barry Smith (ed) Foundations of Gestalt Theory München, Philosophia Verlag 1988
48. An address before the Kant Society, Berlin, 7th December 1924: Über Gestalttheorie, Erlangen 1925. Translation by Willis D. Ellis published in his Source Book of Gestalt Psychology New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co 1938. Reprinted by the Gestalt Journal Press, New York 1997. Available on: http://www.enabling.org/ia/gestalt/gerhards/wert1.html (2003)
49. FC pp 21–22
50. CE p 75
51. DA p 91
52. CE p 184
53. DA p 106
54. DA pp 31ff
55. DA p 35
56. DA p 36
57. CE p 188
58. DA p 77
59. DA p 172
60. DA p 123
61. DA p 77
62. DA p 111
63. DA pp 112–113
64. FC p 18
65. FC p 22
66. DA p 69
67. DA p 156
68. DA p 148
69. DA p 205
70. DA p 111
71. FC p 22
72. DA pp 150–151
73. DA p 111
74. DA p 147
75. FC p 27
76. DA p 110
77. DA p 64
78. DA p 110
79. DA p 159
80. DA pp 159–160
81. DA p. 34
82. K Mattson ‘Reading Follett. An Introduction to The New State’ in: M P Follett The New State p xi 1998 loc cit
83. P F Drucker ‘Introduction’ in P Graham (ed) Mary Parker Follett: Prophet of Management. A Celebration of Writings from 1920s p 7 Boston, Harvard Business School Press 1995
84. Max Weber The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (Talcott Parsons edition) Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press 1957. Published originally in German as Part I of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. According to Weber, legal-rational authority rests on the belief in the legality of enacted rules and the right of those elevated to authority under such rules to issue commands (In business firms, the legal rights of stockholders as owners of the firm). Traditional authority rests on the belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions and the legitimacy of those exercising authority under them (probably not applicable to business firms, except for the fact that often almost divine rights in decision-making are attributed to ‘managers’ — implicitly in most business schools). Finally, charismatic authority rests on devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary character of an individual person, and of the normative patterns or order revealed or ordained by him