Mary Parker Follett

She was one of the first theorists to actively write about and explore the role people had in ineffective management and discuss the importance of learning to deal with and promote positive human relations as a fundamental aspect of the industrial sector.[4] Follett attended Thayer Academy, a collegiate preparatory day school in Braintree, Massachusetts, and spent much of her free time caring for her disabled mother.For the next six years, Follett attended the university on an irregular basis, eventually graduating summa cum laude in 1898 with emphases in government, economics, law, and philosophy.Follett did not subscribe wholly to the common managerial ideation of the time period which presumed that while managers were able to use reason and logic, their subordinates were instead focused on sentimentality.In The New State, she took the position on societal change that:It is a mistake to think that social progress is to depend upon anything happening to the working people: some say that they are to be given more material goods and all will be well; some think they are to be given more "education" and the world will be saved.Ann Pawelec Deschenes (1998) found obscure reference pointing to Mary Parker Follett having coined the term "transformational leadership".Barnard's work, which stressed the critical role of "soft" factors such as "communication" and "informal processes" in organizations, owed a telling but undisclosed debt to Follett's thought and writings.[13] Her influence can also be seen indirectly perhaps in the work of Ron Lippitt, Ken Benne, Lee Bradford, Edie Seashore and others at the National Training Laboratories in Bethel, Maine, where T-Group methodology was first theorized and developed.The award citation states that it is named "in memory of a pioneering woman in the field of management and accountability literature who was international and interdisciplinary in her approach."[19] Follett authored a number of books and numerous essays, articles, and speeches on democracy, human relations, political philosophy, psychology, organizational behavior, and conflict resolution.