Mary Follet Parker

One of the key historical figures in the field of organizational communication is Mary Parker Follett. Mary was born in Massachusetts in 1868 and spent most of her early life there. She had one younger brother. Her childhood was not happy because her mother was disabled and her beloved father died when she was still in her teens. At this young age, Follett was already running the household and, upon her father's death, took over the family's financial affairs. Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1868, she was one of only a handful of women during the late 1800s to attend university. In 1898 she graduated from Radcliffe College, the woman branch of Harvard but was denied a doctorate because she was a woman. She spent her life working in poor Boston neighborhoods, serving on minimum wage boards, and aiding suffrage organizations.

Mary Parker Follett was known as a guru of management in the early days of classical management theory. She was one of the first women ever invited to address the London School of Economics, where she spoke about the cutting edge management issues. She was also recognized by President Theodore Roosevelt who hired her as his personal consultant to managing the non- profits, non-governmental and voluntary organizations.

Follett was considered by her colleagues to be the primary architect of the Boston School center movement; she was also a national leader in the community centers movement in America. Although, until recently, she has seldom been recognized for her enormous contributions to conflict resolution and management theory, Follett was responsible for the development of many key concepts in the field that have become part of our modern dictionary, e.g., seeking a "win-win" solution to conflict. Her work on seeking integrated solutions has been called one of the acts of human genius and a contribution to humanity.

Although Follett did not choose to pursue a life as a traditional intellectual, she can be accurately considered an intellectual, however, based on her status as an scholar among her colleagues, because of her approach to her public work and scholarship, and the lasting significance of her theoretical contributions to the field of organizational communication. Follett applied her training as a young scholar to the development of theories that she developed during her years of community work. On the other hand, her public work directly informed her later scholarship. It is this reciprocal relationship of scholarship and public work that distinguishes Follett as a public scholar rather than simply a public worker. Surely much of Follett's community work would be considered activism today. One of her many projects involved the founding of a debating club, in which young men learned the skills to debate current political issues and had the opportunity to engage in debate with each other. Follett strongly believed in empowerment through community education,