Mary Parker Follett: biography of this organizational psychologist

Mary Parker Follet (1868-1933) was a pioneering psychologist in leadership, bargaining, power, and conflict theories. She likewise carried out several works on democracy and she is known as the mother of "management" or modern management.

In this article we will see a short biography of mary parker follett, whose life allows us to establish a double rupture: on the one hand, to break the myth that psychology has been made without participation of women, and on the other, that of industrial relations and political management also made only by males.

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Biography of Mary Parker Follet: Pioneer in Organizational Psychology

Mary Parket Follet was born in the year 1868 into a Protestant family in Massachusetts, United States. At the age of 12, she began an academic training at the Thayer Academy, a space that had just opened towards the women but that had been built with the objective of promoting education fundamentally of sex male.

Influenced by her teacher and friend Anna Bouton Thompson, Parker Follet developed a special interest in the study and application of scientific methods in research. At the same time, she built its own philosophy on the principles that companies should follow in the current social situation.

Through these principles, she paid special attention to issues such as ensuring the well-being of the workers, value both individual and collective efforts, and encourage work in equipment.

Today the latter seems almost obvious, although not always taken into consideration. But, around the rise of Taylorism (the division of tasks in the production process, which results in the isolation of workers), together with the assemblies in Fordist chains applied in organizations (prioritize the specialization of workers and assembly lines that would allow more production in less time), Mary Parker's theories and her reformulation of Taylorism itself They were very innovative.

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Academic training at Radcliffe College

Mary Parker Follet trained at Harvard University "Annex" (later the Radcliffe College), which was a space created by the university itself and intended for female students, to who they were not seen as capable of receiving official academic recognition. What they did receive, however, was classes with the same teachers who educated the boys. In this context, Mary Parker met, among other intellectuals, William James, psychologist and philosopher of great influence for pragmatism and applied psychology.

The latter wanted psychology to have a practical application for life and problem solving, which was especially well received in the business area and in the management of industries, and served as a great influence for the theories of Mary Parker.

Community intervention and interdisciplinarity

Many women, despite having trained as researchers and scientists, found more and better opportunities for professional development in applied psychology. This was so because the spaces where experimental psychology was carried out were reserved for men, which also made them hostile environments for them. Said process of segregation had among its consequences that of gradually associate applied psychology with feminine values, subsequently discredited before other disciplines associated with masculine values ​​and considered "more scientific".

Beginning in the year 1900, and for 25 years, Mary Parker Follet did community work in social centers in Boston, she, among other places, participated in the Roxbury Debate Club, a place where political training was given to young people about a context of significant marginalization for the immigrant population.

The thought of Mary PArker Follet had a fundamentally interdisciplinary character, through which managed to integrate and dialogue with different currents, both from psychology and sociology and philosophy. From this he was able to develop many groundbreaking work not only as an organizational psychologist, but also in theories of democracy. The latter allowed her to perform as an important adviser to both social centers and economists, politicians and businessmen. However, and given the narrowness of the more positivist psychology, this interdisciplinarity also generates different difficulties to be considered or recognized as a "psychologist".

Main works

The theories developed by Mary Parker Follet have been fundamental to establish several of the principles of modern management. Among other things, her theories differentiated between power “with” and power “over”; participation and influence in groups; and the integrative approach to negotiation, all of them later taken up by a good part of organizational theory.

In very broad strokes we will develop a small part of the works of Mary Parker Follet.

1. Power and influence in politics

In the same context at Radcliffe College, Mary Parker Follett trained in history and political science together with Albert Bushnell Hart, from whom she took great knowledge for the development of research scientific. She graduated summa cum laude from Radcliffe and completed a thesis that was even praised by the former president. of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, for considering the analytical work of Mary Parker Foller valuable on the rhetorical strategies of the US congress.

In these works she carried out a meticulous study on the legislative processes and the effective forms of power and influence, through having made records of the sessions, as well as a compilation of documents and personal interviews with the speakers of the House of Representatives of States Joined. The fruit of this work is the book entitled The Speaker of the House of Representatives (translated as The orator of the congress).

2. The integrating process

In another of her books, The New State: Group Organization, which was the fruit of her experience and her community work, Parker Follet she advocated the creation of an "integrative process" that would be capable of sustaining democratic government outside of the dynamics bureaucratic.

She also defended that the separation between the individual and society is nothing more than a fiction, with which there is to start studying the “groups” and not the “masses”, as well as trying to integrate the difference. held this way a conception of “the political” that also involves the personalTherefore, it can be considered one of the precursors of the most contemporary feminist political philosophies (Domínguez & García, 2005).

3. The creative experience

Creative Experience, from 1924, is another of his main others. In this he understands the "creative experience" as the form of participation that puts its effort into creation, where the meeting and confrontation of different interests is also essential. Among other things, Follett explains that behavior is not a relationship of a "subject" acting on an "object" or vice versa (an idea that she in fact considers necessary to abandon), but that it is about a set of activities that meet and interrelate.

From there, he analyzed the processes of social influence, and criticized the sharp separation between "thinking" and "doing" applied to the hypothesis verification processes. Process that is frequently ignored given the consideration that the very approach of the hypothesis already generates an influence on its verification. He also questioned the linear problem-solving processes proposed by the pragmatism school.

4. conflict resolution

Domínguez and García (2005) identify two key elements that articulate Follet's discourse on conflict resolution and that represented a new pattern for the world of organizations: on the one hand, an interactionist concept of conflict, and on the other, a proposal for conflict management through integration.

This is how the integration processes proposed by Parker Follet, together with the distinction that he establishes between "power-with" and "power-over", are two of the most relevant antecedents in different theories applied to the contemporary organizational world, for example the "win-win" perspective of conflict resolution or the importance of recognizing and valuing the diversity.