Out of Place: Management Studies’ Temporal Misplacements of Mary Parker Follett

Abstract

It is hard for management studies to place Mary Parker Follett. She is a woman, and she did not focus on corporations or factories, like the so-called early management pioneers. She is not an academic or a consultant. In this article we examine a further problem contributing to her ideas failing to get the recognition they deserve. We argue that this is because it has proved difficult for our field to place her chronologically and too easy to place her spatially into different management ideas (and fads). Even when management writers have grasped aspects of her contributions, they appear out of step with the accepted chronological ordering of management thought. This contributes to Follett being forgotten and then remembered with surprise, over and over in numerous different ways. Out of step with management studies’ accepted chronology, her legacy floats and is continuously clutched, but our perpetual memory loss means that it never sticks long enough to take root and be cultivated. This also contributes to her epithet: while signifying her as the ‘Prophet of Management’ - which may seem like a plaudit but instead further undermines Follett’s insights and contribution.