Integrating Follett: history, Integrating

Follett
philosophy and management
Ellen S. O'Connor
Visiting Scholar, Stanford University, Scandinavian Consortium for 167
Organizational Research, California, USA
Keywords Philosophy, Management theory, History, Politics
Abstract This paper describes Follett's contribution to management theory in relationship to
the political events and intellectual currents of her time and her unique inter-relating of
philosophy, political theory and management theory.

Conceptions do not develop by themselves; by mingling with concrete situations they do

(Follett, 1924, p. 276).

In this quote, Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933) suggests how she should be
interpreted and understood. This essay takes her advice seriously. It places her
views on organization and management in relationship to her political theories,
particularly her vision of a new (post-World War I) democracy; and her political
theories in relationship to her philosophical stance, particularly her concept of
creative experience, which she took from Hegelian idealism, itself an
integration of Greek and Enlightenment philosophies. Follett's writings are 75
years old. This paper explicitly considers her as an historical figure in a
particular context. It shows how she ``mingled with'' the concrete situations that
formed her and how she, in turn, formed them in her unique ways. The purpose
is to lessen the distance between Follett and contemporary readers ± in essence,
to make her contributions meaningful to us, today. To accomplish this, the
essay makes explicit what has been lost to time: historical events and debates
to which Follett contributed in particular ways, such as the move to
democratize the workplace. It also highlights aspects of our time that make her
difficult for us to appreciate, such as her engagement with philosophy.
In a time characterized by the idea of ``boundarylessness'', Follett has much
to teach. She linked classical philosophical traditions to business and
management. She freely circulated across what we now perceive as distinct,
and, at times, unbridgeable, disciplinary borders: She was at home citing
philosophers, psychologists, political theorists, biologists, legal scholars,
historians, physiologists, and economists ± as well as the Bible. Finally, she
engaged herself deeply in some of the most controversial debates of her time,
bridging the gap between theory and practice, reflection and action. In a time
when we increasingly see that the hard problems require a multidisciplinary
perspective, we can look to Follett as a guide.
This paper has four main parts:
Journal of Management History,
This article is part of the special issue ``Revitalising Mary Parker Follett'', guest edited by Paul Vol. 6 No. 4, 2000, pp. 167-190.
C. Godfrey. # MCB University Press, 1355-252X
JMH (1) an overview of management theory's break with philosophy, which
6,4 helps contextualize Follett vis-aÂ-vis the present time;
(2) a contemporary and historical relating, which identifies important major
events, intellectual developments, and philosophical traditions that
influenced Follett but which are largely forgotten about in present-day
management thought;
168
(3) a description of what made Follett's contributions unique in her day; and
(4) closing reflections on her unique contributions to contemporary
management thought.

Accessing Follett: the philosophy barrier

Follett challenges contemporary readers through her explicit and extensive
engagement with philosophy, particularly the difficult philosophy of Hegel,
arguably the least accessible aspect of Follett's work. This aspect of her work
renders her strange to contemporary sensibilities. Among all its ties to related
disciplines, management's link to philosophy is most weak (Zald, 1996). But
Follett cannot be understood at all if not as a philosopher, and it is precisely this
aspect which distinguishes her in management thought. She consistently
dissolved boundaries between philosophy and management, reflection and
action, spirit and deed. Many years of recent management theory have worked
to make such a position difficult for contemporary management theorists to
appreciate. This section briefly reviews management theory's recent ideas
about philosophy in order to help reduce the distance between Follett and
today's readers.
Classic works in management theory, in particular the works of Barnard
and Simon, explicitly rejected links to philosophy (Cyert and March, 1963,
pp. 17-18). Barnard identified the disciplines of psychology, theology, and
economics with the ``false ideology'' of self-interest (Barnard, 1938, p. 286). He
described an evolution of knowledge and history moving from the former
disciplines' emphasis on the individual to a new discipline, a science of
organization, emphasizing ``interdependence, cooperation, regimentation'' as
``essential aspects of life'' and ``constructive forces of civilization'' (1938, p. 5).
Simon (1948) despaired of the speculative, intuitive theories of management
writers who preceded him and sought to anchor administrative expertise in the
domain of science. Cyert and March (1963, pp. 17-18), reflecting on the history
of the field, stated that although administrative theory ``dates from the earliest
political and social philosophers'', contemporary theorists ``generally reject the
earlier formations with considerable vigor''. They pointed specifically to
Barnard and Simon, who ``argued against the excessively formalistic and non-
operational analysis'' of early administrative theorists.
Yet Follett engaged quite explicitly and deeply with a systematic tradition of
philosophical inquiry: Hegelian idealism. Hegel has been described as ``the last
great systematic thinker in the history of Western philosophy'', a philosopher
who ``sought to render all facets of reality accessible to philosophical
understanding and to integrate them into an intelligible whole'' (Dallmayr, Integrating
1993, pp. 1-2). But while Hegel remains difficult and complex, Follett's unique Follett
contribution was to translate Hegelianism to business. In essence, she
understood management as philosophy in action. The Hegelian influence ± a
primary source for her work ± complicates our ability to read her; it makes her
``different'' and difficult (Calas and Smircich, 1996).
169
Historical context: Follett as a product of her time
Follett's writings contributed to some ``conceptual contests'' (Connolly, 1983) of
her day. To understand her unique contribution involves identifying the
interests at stake during the time she formulated and disseminated her ideas
(Toulmin, 1990). When Follett wrote her important work, The New State (Follett,
1918), she intervened in an ongoing conversation about postwar reconstruction
and in particular the future of democracy. Her later, equally significant work,
Creative Experience (Follett, 1924), intervened in a debate about how new
research in psychology contributed to this vision of democratic life.
After World War I, both a physical and a philosophical reconstruction
(Cleveland and Schafer, 1919) occurred. One important term taken up for
philosophical reconstruction was ``democracy''. The influential philosopher,
John Dewey, spoke out for the application of democratic principles and
practices to the workplace according to a belief in the fundamental autonomy
and dignity of the worker. This thrust was popularly known as industrial
democracy (Croly, 1914; Plumb and Roylance, 1923), which may be traced to
pre-war reform movements (Chambers, 1963). Counter to this move was the
philosophy of the democratic realists, such as the noted political psychologist
Harold Lasswell, and the journalist Walter Lippman. This view took a
pessimistic stance on human nature, arguing that democracy held unwarranted
and unjustified faith in the intellect and dignity of the individual. The
democratic realists argued for a restricted definition of democracy. For
example, Lippmann advocated that decision making should be the province of
experts, not voters. In three contemporary book reviews, Follett's important
work, The New State, was viewed as a contribution to the philosophical
reconstruction that occurred in the postwar years (Follett, 1924, p. 305).

Dewey's industrial democracy

John Dewey was particularly active and visible in postwar conversations about
industrial reorganization and particularly about industrial democracy. After
World War I, he sought to rekindle reform movements that had begun before
the war. These reform movements centered largely around the workplace and
the workers' experience of work. During the war, Dewey had pointed to the
``absurdity of conducting a war for political democracy which leaves industrial
and economic autocracy practically untouched'' (Dewey, 1982b (1918-1919),
p. 85). In a 1918 essay entitled ``Internal social reorganization'', Dewey argued
for three legitimate demands for postwar reconstruction: the right of every
individual to:
JMH . ``always have the opportunity to engage in some form of useful activity'';
6,4 . maintain a decent standard of living, ``not merely of economic livelihood,
but of physical, moral, intellectual, and aesthetic livelihood''; and
. have ``greater industrial autonomy'', meaning ``greater ability on the
part of the workers . . . to control that industry'' (Dewey, 1982a (1920),
170 pp. 83-4).
In another important essay on this topic, ``Creative industry'' (1918), Dewey
defined industrial democracy as the ``autonomous management of each line of
productive work by those directly engaged in it''. He asserted that ``[w]ithout
such democratization of industry'', the laborer would suffer ``the same condition
of intellectual and moral passivity and perversion as that in which he now
lives'' (Dewey, 1982b (1918-1919), p. 335). Dewey accepted the industrial nature
of society, but he held out for the ideal that society could also be democratic
(Dewey, 1982b (1918-1919), p. 335).
Dewey explicitly linked his theories about industry to politics in his 1920
essay, ``Freedom of thought and work'', which described an ongoing struggle
for ``freedom of mind in industry, freedom to participate in its planning and
conduct'' (Dewey, 1982a (1920), p. 11).
. . . freedom of mind no longer finds an adequate expression in political action, or in speech
and writing. Large numbers of men have reached the point where they feel, and are beginning
to see, that they can get true freedom of mind only when they can exercise their minds in
connection with their daily occupations. Executives, managers, scientific men, artists have
such freedom. Why not the others? This is the consciousness which cannot be bought off with
an increased share of the material products of industry. And it also accounts for the thinness
of the old guarantees of freedom of speech, publication and political agitation (Dewey, 1982a
(1920), pp. 9-10).

``Freedom of mind can be achieved only with the exercise of control over one's
work'', Dewey concluded. Compared to this freedom, ``freedom of speech and
the right to vote are of superficial importance'' (Dewey, 1982a (1920), p. 10).

The democratic realists: Contra Dewey

On the other hand, the democratic realists criticized democracy according to
two of its essential beliefs:
(1) the capacity of men for rational political action; and
(2) the belief in the practicality and desirability of maximizing the
participation of all citizens in public life.
They held that the masses were not fit for democracy.
. . . [D]emocracies are haunted by this dilemma: they are frustrated unless in the laying down
of rules there is a large measure of assent; yet they seem unable to find solutions of their
greatest problems except through centralized governing by means of extensive rules which
necessarily ignore the principle of assent. The problems that vex democracy seem to be
unmanageable by democratic methods (Lippmann, 1925, pp. 189-90).
Lippmann argued that the citizen should not be burdened with expert opinions Integrating
but rather the ``responsible administrator'' should make decisions (1922, p. 399). Follett
Key to this argument was the notion of the expert's objectivity and clear-
sightedness (Lippmann, 1922, p. 402).
Only by insisting that problems shall not come up to him until they have passed through a
procedure, can the busy citizen of a modern state hope to deal with them in a form that is 171
intelligible. For issues, as they are stated by a partisan, almost always consist of an intricate
series of facts . . . surrounded by a large fatty mass of stereotyped phrases charged with his
emotion . . . [H]e will emerge from the conference room insisting that what he wants is some
soufilling idea like justice, welfare, Americanism, socialism. On such issues the citizen outside
can sometimes be provoked to fear or admiration, but to judgment never. Before he can do
anything with the argument, the fat has to be boiled out of it for him.
Lippmann held that democracy could not ``be worked successfully'' without
``independent, expert organization for making the unseen facts intelligible to
those who have to make the decisions''. It was time, he declared, ``to escape from
the intolerable and unworkable fiction that each of us must acquire a competent
opinion about all public affairs'' (Lippmann, 1922, p. 31). In fact, Lippmann held
this to be a fatal flaw in the theory of democracy itself (Lippmann, 1922, pp. 31-
32). Political scientists, social scientists, and science, then, would fix this
problem (Lippmann, 1922, p. 32; Lasswell, 1930, p. 201). He thus proposed a
type of rule of the eÂlite.
Coincidentally, psychological theory devoted itself to bringing out the
irrational side of the human being. Freud's and other work in this field opened
the subjective domain. ``Psychological process . . . replaced external reality as
the most pressing topic for investigation'' (Hughes, 1958, p. 66). In particular,
this work pursued the ``nonlogical'' and the ``uncivilized'' and the possibility ``to
exorcise it'' (Hughes, 1958, pp. 35-36; Alexander, 1923, especially Dewey's
introduction, pp. xxii-xxxiii). In this way, fundamental human problems like
uncertainty and conflict would be eliminated. ``A knowledge of the origins and
behaviors of our prejudice and bias . . . might conceivably reduce the
unscientific output by . . . over 50 per cent'', Ogburn wrote in 1922 (Ogburn,
1964, p. 301). The political agitation occurring in the social domain was
construed as the social analogue of the problem that psychological theory had
identified: man's irrationality.
In his attack on democracy, Lippmann exploited both the individual and the
social interpretation of this problem. The ``picture inside [a man's head] so often
misleads men in their dealings with the world outside'' (Lippmann, 1922, p. 30).
Linked to theories of the crowd, psychological research sprung theories and
techniques of propaganda and crowd manipulation, World War I drew
attention to the role of propaganda (Lasswell, 1928). Lasswell, for example,
described symbols as ``foci of concentration for the aroused emotions of the
community'' (1930, p. 189). He cast serious doubt on the ``technique of
discussion'' (1930, p. 194):
The democratic state depends upon the technique of discussion to relieve the strains of
adjustment to a changing world. If the analysis of the individual discloses the probable
JMH irrelevance of what the person demands to what he needs . . . serious doubt is cast upon the
efficacy of the technique of discussion as a means of handling social problems . . . The
6,4 findings of personality research show that the individual is a poor judge of his own interest.

Instead, Lasswell saw in propaganda, when ``vigorously used'', the means for
``the maintenance of public interest in political affairs'' (Lasswell, 1928, p. 263).
Propaganda, considered as the technique of controlling attitudes by the manipulation of
172 significant symbols, is no more moral or immoral than a pump handle. Whether specialization
in the technique can be justified in one's mind depends upon the conviction that the long-run
interest of society in social harmony will be served by expert mobilization of opinion as they
have been served by expert litigation (Lasswell, 1928, p. 264).

This line of research and theory established the theoretical foundation for the
democratic realist critique of participatory democracy (Lasswell, 1930, pp. 196-7):
Democratic theorists . . . have hastily assumed that social harmony depends upon discussion,
and that discussion depends upon the formal consultation of all those affected by social
policies.
The time has come to abandon the assumption that the problem of politics is the problem of
promoting discussion among all the interests concerned in a given problem. Discussion
frequently complicates social difficulties, for the discussion by far-flung interests arouses a
psychology of conflict which produces obstructive, fictitious, and irrelevant values. The
problem of politics is less how to solve conflicts than to prevent them; less to serve as a safety
valve for social protest than to apply social energy to the abolition of recurrent sources of
strain in society.

Lasswell rejected discussion in favor of propaganda, which he asserted would

``facilitate that rather large-scale reconstruction of democratic philosophy
which has recently begun''. Joining this conversation with the claim of
scientism, going back to Hobbes, that factual knowledge would eliminate social
conflict, Lasswell claimed that through propaganda, the ```will of the people' is
removed from sanctimonious taboo and reduced to the matter of fact''
(Lasswell, 1928, p. 264).

Follett's closest circle

Dewey and the industrial democrats argued that capitalism should be
subsumed within democracy; the democratic realists argued for the opposite.
Follett was of the former circle. Her closest colleagues there included Ordway
Tead, Alfred Sheffield, and H.A. Overstreet, whom she met through Henry
Metcalf. In 1920, Dr Metcalf had established the Bureau of Personnel
Administration in New York. It was a school for training personnel
administrators. Metcalf also sponsored a series of evening lectures for
executives. He invited Follett to attend and give some of them; and through her
association there, Follett met others of Metcalf's circle, such as Ordway Tead.
(For substantiation of Follett's direct links among this group, see Cohen, 1972.)
However, Dewey was the most visible representative of this line of thought.
Cotkin (1994, p. 285) refers to Overstreet as a ``devotee'' of Dewey.
Tead, whom Follett met through Metcalf, eventually became Follett's most
strategic ally. For example, Urwick stated that Follett's collected papers,
entitled Dynamic Administration, would never have been published without Integrating
Tead's help (Cohen, 1972, p. 179). Metcalf and Urwick edited this first edition of Follett
Follett's papers (Follett, 1940). Sheffield was acknowledged by Follett has
having been ``most helpful'' and as having read ``the whole of my manuscript
and made many suggestions and additions'' (Follett, 1924, p. xviii). Overstreet
was acknowledged in Follett's earlier work, The New State (1918, p. 15).
Although a review of Follett's extensive interactions with intellectuals, 173
activists, and businessmen of her day is beyond the scope of this paper, it is
important to place her thought in relationship to that of a few significant allies.
This group of intellectuals held the human being as fundamentally capable
and responsible. Likewise, they envisioned the workplace as a means to the
fullest expression of the individual. In particular, they identified the individual
as the end, the organization as the means. From this basic philosophical stance,
both principles and practices were seen to follow. In this regard, Tead was the
most prolific and vocal. He also went the farthest in applying Dewey's ideas
directly to management theory and practice. ``Workers must, finally'', he wrote,
``be given more opportunity . . . to understand the factors which bear on the
control of the business cycle. For . . . we cannot have freedom . . . so long as we
continue to have violent and devastating depressions'' (Tead, 1939, p. 181). He
ended his book with a call for a ``town-hall government of industrial freedom
within our industrial life [emphasis in original]. If we do not, we are going into
something like fascism'' (Tead, 1939, pp. 188-9).
Tead and Metcalf defined democracy as characterized by ``a moral purpose
and a spiritual affirmation'' (1933, p. 499), and as a ``process of personal
achievement in the realm of qualitative good'' (p. 499). In their last chapter,
entitled ``The purpose of industrial government'', they made no distinction
whatsoever between industrial and civic politics. Organizations and political
entities were, for them, ``institutions'', and ``institutions exist not for their own
sake or for the benefit of some small group which momentarily controls them.
They exist to minister to the life of an entire community'' (Tead and Metcalf,
1933, p. 501):
And they are made subservient to public and inclusive ends only as they are controlled under
democratic methods and for democratic ends. The insistence on democracy as the process and
the ideal is not quixotic. It is the essential psychological requirement and condition of the
operation of necessitous affairs in the interests of the participants in those affairs. All of which
is as valid and imperative in industry as anywhere else. And the sooner our citizens within
industry and without can be made to understand the essential unity of aim and pattern which
must underlie all our communal efforts, including the economic because of its crucial and
determining importance, the sooner shall we all work to create a government for industry.
And the sooner shall we all be prepared to agree . . . that American's democratic ideals and
aims must be operative in industry . . . (Tead and Metcalf, 1933, pp. 501-2).

They concluded, ``the continuance of the present master-and-servant

relationship in industry cannot on either economic or psychological grounds . . .
yield the kind of results which secure harmonious operation of our corporate
life'' (Tead and Metcalf, 1933, p. 390).
JMH Sheffield (1922, 1929) and Overstreet (1925, 1927) took up the same
6,4 philosophical premises as Dewey, Tead and Metcalf. However, they developed
practices for operationalizing them in groups. Sheffield conceived of group
discussion as ``democratic technique'' (Sheffield, 1929, p. xiii) and group life as a
``democratic process'' (Sheffield, 1929, p. 73). Sheffield was a professor of
rhetoric at Wellesley College, and he developed a primer to show ``every man
174 (and woman too) with an ambition for self-betterment'' how to participate in
public discussion (Sheffield, 1922, p. v) and, most relevant for Follett, how to
achieve ``integrative agreement'' as opposed to ``tyranny'' (Sheffield, 1929,
p. 101). He explicitly joined his educational program to the interests of workers;
in the introduction to Joining Public Discussion he stated his aim: to give
working people ``a self-starter towards influential speaking'' (Sheffield, 1922,
pp. v-vi):
There has never been a time when the influence of working men and women could count for
so much as it can count today. Organized labor has passed the stage of mere collective
bargaining over hours and pay. Its forward-looking leadership is now taking heed of that
greatest waste-product of modern industry ± the unused talents of its workers. These talents
it means to enlist in constructive policies ± policies that must be shaped to the advantage of
wage earners by their own right thinking . . . Thousands of men and women are sitting silent
in labor meetings who, with a little training, would find their voices and their roles as
contributors to labor's counsels (Sheffield, 1922).

Overstreet explicitly described his work as ``education for democracy'' (1925,

p. viii). He developed a primer ``to get people to think with us'' (Overstreet, 1925,
p. 3). Sheffield and Overstreet may thus be understood as making the
techniques of persuasion and propaganda accessible to the ordinary person ±
and thus democratizing them. Consistent with Dewey's interest in the
importance of education for democratic life, they described techniques of
speaking, writing, reading and listening as a means toward consensus building
and conflict resolution ± even identification and empathy (Overstreet, 1927).
Follett clearly aligned herself with these views; see particularly the Appendix
to The New State, entitled ``The training for the new democracy''; (Follett, 1918,
pp. 363-73).
Thus Follett and her colleagues intervened in a debate about the concept and
practice of democracy ± and in particular to what extent it should extend into
workplaces and management practices. However, it is also important to
understand a larger, less time-bound tradition in which she placed herself.

Follett in a philosophical tradition

Although Follett is best known in management theory for Dynamic
Administration (papers from the mid-1920s to the early-1930s), a better
understanding of her philosophical views may be gained by studying her two
earlier works, The New State (Follett, 1918) and Creative Experience (Follett,
1924). These contain more generous expositions of the philosophical premises
that Follett later applied to management theory and practice. In connection
with these premises, Follett explicitly stated her references. She cited Holt, Bok,
James, Kempf and Dewey in her exposition of circular response theory (Follett, Integrating
1924, pp. 53-77). However, of all her influences, Hegel (1770-1831) was the most Follett
profound.
Hegel had virtually imprinted an entire generation of American
philosophers, including the two most influential in Follett's day ± James and
Dewey (Westbrook, 1991, pp. 13, 46, 51). Dewey, James, and other leading
philosophers shed much of this influence, particularly the idealist aspect, 175
during the early-1900s. Dewey taught Hegelian philosophy until 1899
(Westbrook, 1991, p. 60). World War I, in particular, saw the triumph of realism
and pragmatism over idealism (Westbrook, 1991, p. 121). Political correctness
played a part here. Shortly after the start of the war, in 1915, Dewey wrote an
essay entitled ``German philosophy and politics'', in which he rejected the
idealism of Fichte and Hegel and in particular Hegel's statist philosophy. He
argued that these philosophers made it impossible for German culture to
appreciate the virtues of a pragmatic, consequentialist ethics: ``A gospel of duty
separated from empirical purposes and results tends to gag intelligence''
(Dewey, 1979 (1915), p. 164). In particular, Dewey took aim at the combination
of German philosophy and German militarism: the former led to patriotism
linked to religious obligation; the war was ``the final seal of devotion to the
extension of the kingdom of the Absolute on earth'' (Dewey, 1979 (1915), p. 182).
Follett defended Hegel in this regard: ``Hegelianism . . . seems to enthrone the
state and override the individual'' (Follett, 1918, p. 172). Those who held this
view of Hegelianism she called ``misinterpreters'' (Follett, 1918, p. 172) and the
view itself, a ``misunderstood Hegelianism'' (Follett, 1918, pp. 263-7). This view
understood the Hegelian state ``as something `above and beyond' men'', as a
separate entity virtually independent of men.
Such a conception is fundamentally wrong and wholly against the spirit of Hegel . . . Hegel's
related parts received their meaning only in the conception of total relativity. The soul of
Hegelianism is total relativity, but this is the essence of the compounding of consciousness.
As for James, the related parts and their relations appear simultaneously and with equal
reality, so in Hegel's total relativity: the members of the state in their right relation to one
another appear in all the different degrees of reality together as one whole total relativity ±
never sundered, never warring against the true Self, the Whole (Follett, 1918, pp. 266-7).

However, Follett added more complexity to this problem by positing a ``real

Hegel'' and ``the Hegel who misapplied his own doctrine, who preached the
absolutism of the Prussian State''. These ``false leadings'' of Hegel, which she
attributed to the great philosopher himself, were prominent in people's minds,
she acknowledged; ``and there has been a reaction to their teaching due to the
panic we all feel at the mere thought of an absolute monarch and an
irresponsible state''. Follett explicitly referenced Hegel's justified political
incorrectness: ``The present behavior of Prussia . . . tends to increase the panic,
and the fashion of jeering at Hegel and his `misguided' followers is widespread''
(Follett, 1918, p. 267).
According to Fox and Urwick (1973, p. ix-x), Follett's knowledge of Hegel
came through Anna Boynton Thompson, Follett's history teacher in secondary
JMH school. Thompson was a student of the American idealist, Josiah Royce, who
6,4 introduced Hegel and Fichte to American scholars (Royce 1899). Thompson
introduced Follett to ``the rigours of philosophical thinking, particularly that of
the Idealist school'' (Fox and Urwick, 1973, p. x). Follett ``never lost . . . her
sympathy for certain Idealist notions'' (Fox and Urwick, 1973, pp. x, xiv) ± even
when they were quite counter to the spirit of her time. What made Follett's
176 Hegelianism extraordinary, however, was its application in the most mundane
of all places and forms: the workplace and the activities of management.
From Hegel, Follett (and others, including Dewey) took the concept of
circularity and unity. In essence, Hegel posited that spirit is projected into the
world and it interacts dialectically with matter. Furthermore, spirit cannot
actualize itself without material resistance (Rose, 1981, pp. 101, 174; White,
1997):
. . . dialectics for Hegel signaled the innermost movement of reality and thought, a movement
deriving from the fact that no thing or concept stands by itself but gains its meaning from its
relationship to a whole web of other things and concepts . . . (Dallmayr, 1993, p. 3).

In this way, the Hegelian dialectic and the ``circular reflex arc'' (the latter made
famous by Dewey and Bok, in particular) conveyed fundamentally the same
basic idea. This notion enters into a number of Follett's concepts, e.g. circular
relations (Taylor, 1975, pp. 80, 290-4), the ``total situation'' (related to the
Hegelian ``totality''; see Taylor, 1975, pp. 274-6), conflict solving through
integration, unity (Hegel, 1975, pp. 156, 161; Taylor, 1975, pp. 86, 105, 277), and
interpenetration (Hegel, 1975, p. 161).
Another important contribution of Hegel to Follett's thought is the concept
of Sittlicheit, which Dallmayr translates as ``shared ethical life'' (Dallmayr, 1993,
p. 9) and which Taylor describes as a ``set of obligations we have to further and
sustain a society'' (Taylor, 1975, p. 376). Hegel sought to reconcile the
Enlightenment idea of the autonomous moral individual with the Greek idea of
the polis, or a site in which the ``good life is achieved through shared
involvement in public affairs'' (Dallmayr, 1993, p. 7). Follett appreciated Hegel's
own appreciation of the Greek philosophical tradition; e.g. she quoted
Heraclitus: ``Nature desires eagerly opposites and, out of them, it completes the
harmony, not out of similars'' (Follett, 1918, p. 34). For Hegel, the polis ``was
insifficiently differentiated or attentive to the diversification flowing from
moral autonomy and the pursuit of individual freedom''. The promotion of
individual autonomy was ``the unquestionable achievement of modernity'',
particularly the Reformation and the Enlightenment. However, ``modern
individualism was one-sided by stressing only the exodus of individuals from
traditional bonds . . . while neglecting the moral and cultural benefits derived
from participation in a political community and the ongoing quest for the good
life''. Another interpreter of Hegel, Charles Taylor, describes this reconciliation
as part of the Hegelian concept of dialectic (Taylor, 1975, p. 78):
The individual man is part not just of a larger social whole, he and his society are in turn set
in a wider frame, mankind, and the whole of nature, with which they are in interchange . . .
 The development of self-consciousness has meant a separation from these larger frameworks, Integrating
formerly seen as meaningful orders, now looked on as a set of de facto limits and conditions of
our action . . . [T]his separation gives rise to an opposition for a knowing subject. But it creates Follett
one for the subject as a free expressive being as well.

``For to be true to ourselves, we seem to have both to separate from and

integrate into this larger framework'' (Taylor, 1975, p. 78). ``Freedom seems to
require both individual independence and integration into a larger life . . . It 177
must be shared in a society which sustains a culture that nurtures it and
institutions which give effect to it'' (Taylor, 1975, p. 78).
Hegel's project was itself fundamentally dialectic in its quest for ``the
integration and transcendence . . . of the respective merits of antiquity and
modernity through the conceptual formulation of a modern polis'' (Dallmayr,
1993, p. 7). This recalls the title of Follett's most important political work, The
New State: Group Organization the Solution of Popular Government (Follett,
1918). Although the work was mentioned earlier in the context of contemporary
discourse about political and social reconstruction after World War I, it is also
important to position the work in relationship to Hegel's political theoretical
project. As Hegel called for ``political communities [to] again become important
centres of concern and activity for their members in a way which connects
them to the whole'' (Taylor, 1975, p. 416), so did Follett renew this call. Hegel
probably came closest to Follett's translation of him to business settings in his
views on decision making (interpreted by Taylor, 1975, p. 405):
Complete freedom would require that the whole outcome be decided by me. But of course,
since the whole outcome is a social one, it cannot be decided by me alone. Or rather, if I decide
it alone, then no one else who lives under this outcome is free. If we are all to be free, we must
all take the decision. But this means that we must all take the whole decision, we must all
participate in a decision about the nature of the total outcome. There must be universal and
total participation.

Follett may be understood in relationship to her political and an historical-

philosophical context. With regard to the former, she was located in, and
located herself in, a debate about the future of democracy, particularly with
regard to industrial life. With regard to the latter, she worked in a philosophical
tradition dating back to the Greeks, via Hegel. However, simply to locate Follett
as a product of contemporary and historical influences does not do justice to
her work. Certainly she was in part formed, and in part formed herself, by
discourse that preceded her and events beyond her control. Yet she also
contributed something highly unique to managerial discourse and theory in
particular.

Follett's unique contributions

First, a disclaimer that Follett herself would have appreciated: It is difficult to
separate particular strands of her thought, as is required in an expository
essay, without ruining their integrity. Follett described how creative activity
could not be grasped (Follett, 1918, p. 63):
JMH To view from the outside, to dissect it into its different elements, to lay these elements on the
dissecting table as so many different individuals, is to kill the life and feed the fancy with
6,4 dead images, empty, sterile concepts.

Follett used the analogy of contemporary scholars who would attempt to

understand ``Chinese metaphysics'' by first looking up ``China'', then
``metaphysics'', in an encyclopedia (Follett, 1940, p. 124). The expositor of ``key
178 themes'' in Follett's work faces a challenge, for her ideas work together in an
integrated whole.

Vitality: relationship to life

In essence, Follett offers a philosophy and a practice of life tightly coupled to
that philosophy. She identifies the business world, and business life, as the
principal arena for a philosophically-inspired practice of life. Follett's
governing concern was creative, vital, and lifegiving experience ± much akin to
Hegel's notion of objective spirit (Dallmayr, 1987, p. 252). Follett asserts that
``The fundamental law of the universe is the increase of life'' (1940, p. 72); thus
``[o]ur new motto must be, Live in such a manner that the fulness of life may
come to all'' (1918, p. 353). These two quotes perhaps best synthesize her
thought: They express Follett's ideas about the vital relationship between the
self and the other, or the ``self in relation'' (1918, p. 192), which engages creative
experience.
This theme of vitality runs through both of Follett's major works. She
described leaders as those ``who can liberate the greatest amount of energy in
[their] community'' (Follett, 1918, p. 230). She frequently linked group process,
creativity, vitality, and the ``act of relating'' (Follett, 1924, pp. 42, 63, 101, 201,
321). For example, Follett defined death as the state of ``non-relation'' (1918, p.
63). In a lighter vein, she amused herself with a student's mistake which
confused ``social contract'' with ``social contact'': ```Government is a social
contact' . . . He was nearer the truth than he knew'' (Follett 1918, p. 202). In
describing immigration, she rejected assimilation and separatism in favor of
``the community idea'', or ``the articulated whole''. ``We want all these different
peoples to be part of a true community . . . Only by a mutual permeation of
ideals shall we enrich our lives and they ours'' (Follett, 1918, p. 106). For Follett,
this integration played out concretely at the professional level. For example, in
describing her friend and colleague, Ada Sheffield's, approach to social work
(Follett, 1924, p. 106), she wrote:
The value of the worker with children depends largely, not on her understanding of children
. . . neither on her understanding of social conditions as a student of sociology, but on her
ability to do her part in freeing the life of the child that possibilities of child and possibilities
of social environment may form a ``whole'', or working-unit, which shall make the child's life
more happy and fruitful, and also make the social environment contain more possibilities for
all young people.

Follett frequently linked her concept of creativity with democracy (Follett,

1924, pp. 230, 302; 1918, pp. 43, 99, 103). She described democracy as ``an
integrated will'' (1918, p. 142) and as a process of ``co-creating'' (1924, p. 302).
She also clearly recognized that she lived in a time when these precious values Integrating
were being debated and even threatened. She pointed to evidence ``that Follett
democracy is yet possible for America'' (Follett, 1918, p. 239). ``The so-called
evils of democracy . . . are the evils of our lack of democracy . . . It is not
democracy which is `on trial', as is so often said, but it is we ourselves who are
on trial'' (Follett, 1918, p. 159).
Our once-honored blind forces are more and more losing their mastery over us. We are at this
179
moment . . . in a difficult transition period. We are ``freer'' than ever before; the trouble is we do
not know what to do with this freedom. It is easy to live the moral, the ``social'', life when it
consists in following a path carefully marked out for us, but the task given us to-day is to
revalue all the world values, to steer straight on and on into the unknown ± a gallant forth-
faring indeed. But conscious evolution, the endless process of a perfect coordinating,
demands vital people. War is the easy way: we take to war because we have not enough
vitality for the far more difficult job of agreeing. So also that kind of religion which consists of
contemplation of other-worldliness is the easy way, and we take to that when we have not
enough vitality deliberately to direct our life and construct our world. It takes more spiritual
energy to express the group spirit than the particularist spirit. This is its glory as well as its
difficulty. We have to be higher order of beings to do it ± we become higher order of beings by
doing it. And so the progress goes on forever: it means life forever in the making, and the
creative responsibility of every man.
Conscious evolution is the key to that larger view of democracy which we are embracing
to-day. The key? Every man sharing in the creative process is democracy; that is our politics
and our religion . . . God is the perpetual Call to our self-fulfilling. We, by sharing in the life-
process which binds all together in active, working unity are all the time sharing in the making
of the Universe. This thought calls forth everything heroic that is in us; every power of which
we are capable must be gathered to this glorious destiny. This is the True Democracy.

The theme of integration goes deeper, however, to the basic concept of the self.
Follett conceives of no self without relationship, specifically, without
relationship to other. This notion of relationship, which Follett took from Hegel,
touches every aspect of her philosophy. It eliminates the distinction between
the individual and the collective; instead, there is only relationship. This
relationship produces a vital state and a creative individual: ``The state will
become a splendid thing when each one of us becomes a splendid individual''
(Follett, 1918, p. 337).
It is the conviction of separateness which has to be conquered before civilization can proceed.
Community must be the foundation stone of the New State (Follett, 1918, p. 359).

Follett founded her New State on ``reciprocal rights and duties and liabilities
which flow from a relation'' (1918, p. 128; 1924, p. 111). Hers is a radical and
perhaps incomprehensible view to the modern sensibility, following
utilitarianism and classical liberalism, which are philosophies based on
separation along with mechanisms to attempt societal unity. The latter two
schools posit the individual as fundamentally existing in isolation or
separateness. This initial positing then requires a second step which gives the
individual the possibility of social life. Follett understands the social contract to
be precisely such a mechanism. The contract is a fictional entity designed to
resolve the ``false dualism'' of a philosophy based on the concept of a separated
JMH individual. In these theories, Follett recognizes a fear and suspicion of the
6,4 individual (1918, p. 164). And at the same time, ironically, she also rejects them
for their ``excessive and arrogant individualism'' (1918, pp. 64, 80). She traces
the philosophical foundation of these ideas back to utilitarian philosophy (1918,
pp. 61, 138-9), which she judges to be a ``false philosophy based on an unrelated
individual'' (1918, p. 163):
180 The seeing of self as, with all other selves, creating, demands a new attitude and a new
activity in man. The fallacy of self-and-others fades away and there is only self-in-and-
through others, only others so firmly rooted in the self and so fruifully growing there that
sundering is impossible (1918, p. 8).

``How can we do away with this artificial separation which is the dry-rot of our
life'', Follett asks. ``First, we must realize that each has something to give'' (1918,
p. 191):
Every man comes to us with a golden gift in his heart. Do we dare, therefore, avoid any man?
If I stay by myself on my little self-made pedestal, I narrow myself down to my own personal
equation of error. If I go to all my neighbors, my own life increases in multiple measure. The
aim of each of us should be to live in the lives of all. Those fringes which connect my life with
the life of every other human being in the world are the inlets by which central forces flow
into me. I am a worse lawyer, a worse teacher, a worse doctor if I do not know these wider
contacts. Let us seek then those bonds which unite us with every other life.

For Follett, the democratic realists' view of consent, and expert-elites' role in
producing it, was highly misguided and manipulative ± but most importantly,
it was based on a false understanding of human nature. Follett chose to begin
Creative Experience with a critique on the cult of the fact. She pointed out that
experts, too, have interests (1924, p. 9). ``Let us not be too naive about facts'', she
cautioned. ``Parallel to the history of the use of facts must be written the history
of the use of power'' (1924, p. 14). It is important to remember that Follett's first
book, The Speaker of the House of Representatives (Follett, 1896), was a detailed
study of the use of power in the US Legislature.
The previous section described how facts and expertise were held out in
Follett's day, e.g. by Lippmann, as offering the solution to social conflict.
Follett, however, believed instead in the critical capacity of the individual. Even
in stating her views, she emphasized her exercise of careful choice in this
matter: ``We need not only a psychology which looks at us as we are, but a
psychology which points the way to that which we may become'' (Follett, 1918,
p. 91). In this way, Follett rejected the prevailing positivist idea that one could
separate values from facts. For example, with regard to the notion of crowd
psychology advanced by students of propaganda, Follett wrote, ``In so far as
this is true it is to be steadily opposed'' (Follett, 1918, p. 152). During a time
when ethics itself was subject to relativism and scientism (Bannister, 1987;
Purcell, 1973), Follett maintained a basic belief in the power of beliefs.
``Whether the people of America shall be a crowd, under the laws of suggestion
and imitation, or follow the laws of the group, is the underlying problem of
today'' (Follett, 1918, p. 153). To Lippmann and others who pioneered
develoments in propaganda and crowd psychology, Follett responded:
 . . . the corruption of politics is due largely to the conception of the people as a crowd. To Integrating
change this idea is, I believe, the first step in the reform of our political life. Unless this is done
before we make sweeping changes in the mechanism of government, such changes will not Follett
mean progress. If the people are a crowd capable of nothing but imitation, what is the use of
all the direct government we are trying to bring about, how can a ``crowd'' be considered
capable of political decisions? Direct government gives to every one the right to express his
opinion. The question is whether that opinion is to be his particularist opinion or the imitation
of the crowd or the creation of the group. The party has dominated us in the past chiefly 181
because we have truly believed the people to be a crowd. When we understand the law of
association as the law of psychic interplay, then indeed we shall be on the way towards the
New Democracy (Follett, 1918, p. 181).

``We have not as yet a clear and adequate definition of the `people''', she
continued. She accused the crowd psychologists of ``that same sociological error
which is the cause of so many confusions in our political thought: that the
social process is the spread of similarities by suggestion and imitation''. In this
error, ``any opinion that is shared, simply because it is shared, is called public
opinion'' (Follett, 1918, pp. 220-1). However, if the opinion is called ``shared''
simply because ``it has spread among large numbers by `unconscious imitation',
then it is not a genuine public opinion''. To be genuine public opinion, ``the
process by which it has been evolved must be that of intermingling and
interpenetrating''. Follett called for a ``mode of living'' by which ``there shall be
less and less infection of crowds and more and more an evolving of genuine
group thought'' (Follett, 1918, p. 221).

Faith in human nature

Fox and Urwick (1973) identify Follett with the view that the ``highest
achievement depends ultimately as much on the character of the people as
individuals as on the physical or social machinery they may use'' (p. vii). Follett
held human nature in unconditional esteem. ``We are often told to `surrender
our individuality'. To claim our individuality is the one essential claim we have
on the universe'' (1918, p. 82). Follett endowed the individual with considerable
agency, autonomy, dignity, and power. In a time when human nature was often
viewed pessimistically, she observed that ``It all comes down to our fear of men''
(Follett, 1918, p. 341):
If we could believe in men, if we could see that circle which unites human passion and divine
achievement as a halo round the head of each human being, then social and political
reorganization would no longer be a hope but a fact. The old individualism feared men; the
corner-stone of the new individualism is faith in men.

And this stand was deeply political as well: For Follett, democracy meant ``faith
in humanity'' (Follett, 1918, p. 156).
This stance on human nature led Follett to reject the stimulus-response
model of human behavior (1924, p. 60) as overly simplistic and static, and as
insufficiently vital and dynamic. Human interaction with the world is more
complex than this and is characterized by ``circular response'' and ``circular
behavior'' (1924, p. 61), which paralleled her theory of integration. ``Through
circular response we are creating each other all the time'' (Follett, 1924, p. 62).
JMH For Follett, life was relation; death, non-relation (1918, p. 63), thus her
6,4 conceptual link across creativity, vitality, and interrelating. She put this
philosophy in highly practical terms. She called for ``a technique of human
relations based on the preservation of the integrity of the individual'' (1924,
p. xiii) and proclaimed that ``the first test of productive power of collective life is
its nourishment of the individual'' (1924, p. xiii).
182 Follett posited a scenario in which every member of an organization or
community could make his fullest contribution. ``I must not subordinate myself,
I must affirm myself and give my full positive value . . .'' (1918, p. 26). Follett
explicitly linked her theory to democratic philosophy: ``[T]here is nothing in the
world so democratic as the production of a genuine group will'' (1918, p. 31). In
psychological theory, Follett found support for her views. Follett appreciated
psychology's potential for giving the workman a ``gradually increasing share
. . . in the actual control of industry'' (1918, p. 120). In distinct opposition to
Lasswell and Lippmann, she rejected elitist attitudes as egoistic (1918, p. 83)
and as ``depend[ent] on wretchedness'' (1918, p. 84). ``For every two or three of us
think ourselves a little better than every other two or three, and this becomes a
dead wall of separation, of misunderstanding, of antagonism'' (1918, p. 191).
Hegel had written of the possibility of the individual ``seeing himself in the
alien'' (quoted in Rose, 1981, p. 69), affording a ``seeing into . . . which does not
dominate or suppress but recognizes the difference and sameness of the other''
(Rose, 1981, p. 69).

Democracy: a philosophy and a practice

Follett generously endowed the individual with power: power to ``construct the
moral universe'' (p. 53), to ``create our ideals'' (p. 52), and to make ``a new choice
at every moment'' (p. 54), and to make judgments (1918, p. 154). Follett rejected
compromise based on this same criterion, the value of the individual. ``Whoever
advocates compromise abandons the individual: the individual is to give up
some part of himself so that some action may take place'' (1924, p. 163). Rather,
the integrity of the individual could be pursued only through integration (1924,
p. 163). ``The individual is not for a moment to yield his right to judge for
himself'', she claimed. Only individuals participating fully, contributing fully,
could forge ``a collective will that we all have created''; ``otherwise we have
slavery'' (1918, p. 59):
It may be true that we have lived under the domination either of individuals or of crowds . . .
but now is the moment when this must be deliberately challenged. The party boss must go,
the wise men chosen by the reform associations must go . . . We have said, ``The people must
rule''. We now ask, ``How are they to rule?'' It is the technique of democracy which we are
seeking (1918, pp. 154-5).

Follett's uniqueness is in her integration of philosophy, business, and life.

Critics had attacked Dewey for the vagueness of his concept of democracy,
``virtually useless as a practical ethical tool'' (Westbrook, 1991, p. 204).
Ironically, Dewey, who reproached the idealists for their lack of attention to
practical outcomes, was accused of using ``democracy'' as an ``unanalyzed term,
useful as a call to battle, but not an intellectual tool, turning up fresh sod for the Integrating
changing future'' (Bourne, quoted in Westbrook, 1991, p. 204). When Follett Follett
spoke of democracy, she had the same concerns. In her speech and essay,
``Responsibility in business management'', she used the term in quotes and
followed it with the phrase ``whatever that means'' (Follett, 1940, p. 160). But
she also took the concept quite seriously, enough to take on the dominant
philosophical currents by name. ``The essence of pragmatism, as commonly 183
understood, is testing. But whenever you `test' you assume a static idea. With a
living idea, however, truth may be created'' (Follett, 1919, pp. 586-7):
We are told by a realist that according to pragmatism truth is ``a harmony between thought
and things''. Is it not more ``realistic'' to say that thought and things interpenetrate and that
this is the creating activity? Rationalists ``verify'' within the realm of reason. Pragmatists
``test'' in the concrete world. The step beyond is to learn to create in both.

``It may be interesting to read philosophy, but the thrilling thing for . . . us to do
is to make it come true . . . Life is the true revealer: I can never understand the
whole by reason, only when the heartbeat of the whole throbs through me as
the pulse of my own being'' (Follett, 1918, p. 265). For Follett, even Dewey's
definition of democracy was insufficiently connected to life (Follett, 1940,
p. 190):
. . . [M]any people think that democracy means all taking part. If it means only that, I do not
believe in democracy. It is the fruitful relating, the interacting of parts, a co-functioning, that
we want . . . Professor Dewey says that it is the role of the public in government . . . to
intervene not continuously but at certain junctures. He explains . . . that the public has its own
life to lead . . . I do not think that there is any possible way in which Professor Dewey can
support this statement. We have our own work? As a Vermont farmer, I go out and shear my
sheep, but at Washington they are putting a tariff on wool ± I hope. My amusements? I go to
the movies and at the same time the government is censoring them ± I fear . . . the basis for
understanding the problems of political science is the same as the basis for understanding
business administration ± it is the understanding of the nature of integrative unities.

A unique trait of Follett's style, which reflects her uniqueness, is her manner of
relating abstract philosophical views in stories of concrete, everyday experience.
For example, Follett most explicitly defined democracy in her essay, ``The
psychology of consent and participation'' (1940, p. 229). The essay is unusual in
its form. She opens with a narrative about the evening centres ± ``for adults to
meet in schoolhouses for education, for recreation, for citizen's meetings, and the
like'' (p. 210) ± that ``were opened in Boston'' (Fox and Urwick, 1973, pp. xii-xv).
Follett was being modest; for a colleague described her as ``the founder of the
Boston school centers'' (Mulroy, quoted in Fox and Urwick, 1973, p. xiii). She
describes her hope at the time that ``the centres would be started on a more or
less democratic basis'' (1940, p. 210). The director of one of the centres informed
her they were doing just what she wanted: The members would get together
later that evening to take a vote on certain questions (Follett, 1940, p. 211):
But this was not at all what I had wanted. I had wanted all the education and responsibility
involved in a consideration of these questions, and the greater interest, too, that would
undoubtedly have been aroused; I had not been thinking of mere voting.
JMH Follett distinguished between ``mere voting'', or a ``gesture of agreement'',
6,4 versus ``real agreement''. ``We cannot obtain genuine consent by a vote any
more than you can `declare' peace. That is what the Allies tried to do at
Versailles. They tried to declare peace instead of opening the way for the
process of peace achievement.'' Follett defines ``peace'', in this context, as ``a
process and an attainment''. Agreements become ``genuine'' only by means of ``a
184 slow process of the interweaving of many activities, and this is not consent but
participation'' (Follett, 1940, p. 211). In this essay, Follett elaborated further on
the distinction between consent and participation, and more specifically on her
view of participation as an ``interrelating'' which ``involves the interpenetration
of the ideas of the parties concerned'' (Follett, 1940, p. 212). Furthermore, she
held that participation ``should begin with the beginning of the process'' (Follett,
1940, p. 223):
It is . . . a commonplace that when differences between people grow instead of being smoothed
out while they are in the incipient stage, reconciliation will be much more difficult ± let your
differences crystallize and you will probably find yourself with a fight on your hands . . . the
opportunity [should] be given early in the undertaking.

Follett here broached another aspect of her democratic philosophy of the

workplace, for she mentioned that this integration should begin ``from the
bottom''. For example, she criticized the English Labour Party for its demand
for ``independent'' power, meaning that labour has a certain authority in its
capacity as labour and this authority should, ``in the later stages of
management, be joined to the authority exercised by management''. But for
Follett, this is ``a wholly unsound principle of organization''. Instead,
``participation in the early stages should begin . . . with preliminary fact-
finding''. Referencing a study on the safety of mines, she criticized Laski's idea
of an independent investigation (Follett, 1940, p. 224):
I want to use that body of experience, but in joint investigation, for it is usually too late for
that experience to be integrated with that of the managers by the time the separate reports are
finished. When we have two finished reports of ``independent'' investigation, the stage is set
for a fight ± of some sort.

To this end, she argued that workers participate in ``counsel'' for the usual
reasons (industrial peace, strike avoidance, resolution of grievances) but even
more so ``in order to get every bit of knowledge and experience the man in daily
touch with the processes and details of the business has gained''. She concluded
by linking this cause to the practical values of business: ``The success and
progress of any business will depend largely on its ability to get its fullest
contribution from every man in office or factory, store or bank'' (Follett, 1940,
p. 228). Follett called for ``joint responsibility'' and ``joint control'' across all
members of the organization (Follett, 1940, p. 83). She blurred the distinction
between worker and manager (Follett, 1940, pp. 85, 88) and even the very
concept of ``sides'' (Follett, 1940, p. 72). ``We seek an integrative unity as the
foundation for business development'' (Follett, 1940, p. 77). The premise of all
this logic was interdependence (Follett, 1940, p. 88):
 The parts of modern business are so intricately interwoven that the worker, in order to have Integrating
an intelligent opinion in regard to even his own problems, has not only to know something of
processes, of equipment, has not only to consider the effect of the introduction of new Follett
machinery and the training of the worker; he should also understand the connection between
the production and the commercial side, should know something of the effectiveness of the
sales organization . . . There are many now who think the worker should study unit costs, but
he cannot understand low unit costs, can he, without knowing something of the terms of
securing credit which help to determine unit costs? Moreover, I think some knowledge of the 185
general business and trade policy ± adjustment of supply and demand, prospective contracts,
even the opening of new markets ± would make the opinion of the worker on production
processes more valuable.

Follett's views on integration, interdependence, and unity not only followed in a

long philosophical tradition, but also they were linked to everyday problems to
which working people could readily relate. Follett had numerous examples from
industry, and she related them in a straightforward, conversational manner (in
fact, her 1940 collected papers were originally speeches). She related the abstract
concept of ``circular behavior'' to the mundane activity of giving and receiving
orders (Follett, 1940, pp. 50-70). She suggested that if we wanted to study power,
we should ``make some study of it in our daily lives ± in our homes, in our
business, or wherever we are'' (Follett, 1940, p. 98) ± and did so by means of
numerous examples from her experience in industry (including one extensive
account of her attempt to place a phone call, 1940, p. 161), stories told to her by
others, and accounts of world affairs (e.g. Follett, 1940, pp. 105, 202). The
process of her writing reflects this interrelating as well. She originally conceived
of her book, The New State, as a story of the neighborhood programs she
developed. Going to the heart of it, she found the project to be fundamentally
philosophical (Fox, 1968, pp. 520-1). Fundamental Hegelian concepts ± circular
relation; Sittlichkeit (``the moral obligations I have to an ongoing community of
which I am a part'') (Taylor, 1979, p. 83); and the state as the site of ``total and
universal participation'' (Taylor, 1979, pp. 104-18) since ``in belonging to it the
individual is already living beyond himself in some larger life'' (Taylor, 1979,
p. 51) ± are taken up by Follett and placed in the context of American democracy
and neighborhoods. In this work, Follett explicitly attacked the construct of
``crowd psychology'', calling it a tool to manipulate public opinion. She rejected
those who pursued ``techniques of persuasion'' (Fox and Urwick, 1973, p. xi). She
found them too closely aligned to theories of consent (Follett, 1940, p. 171) and of
dominance (``power over'') (Follett, 1940, p. 102):
. . . [C]onsent is sometimes a matter in which managers deceive themselves. It is possible for
consent to be so perfunctory that managers are willing to give the workers a vote on many
more matters than they would really yield control of. I know an institution where this takes
place. The director says to his staff: ``We will have democracy here. You will vote on
everything''. But I have never known his subordinates to vote against anything he proposed.
Such unanimity seems to me suspicious.

Again, Follett invoked ``good business practice'' in support of this view: ``[A]n
enterprise can be more successfully run by securing the co-operation of the
workers'' (Follett, 1940, p. 172). But she also invoked her democratic
JMH philosophy: ``One of the very encouraging things about business practice today
6,4 is that in some instances workers are being given a genuine participation in the
control of industry'' (Follett, 1940, p. 172). And it was not a great leap from
democratic to moral philosophy (Follett, 1940, pp. 181-2):
. . . [T]he successful business is one which is always increasing management throughout the
whole enterprise in the sense of developing initiative, invention. Any manager who is looking
186 with far-seeing eyes to the progress of his business wants not so much to locate authority as
to increase capacity . . . The real reason that labour rebels is not the money reason given by
the economists, is not, moreover, the psychologists' instincts of self-respect and the like, but
that the fundamental law of the universe is the increase of life, the development of human
powers, and either you keep yourself in obedience to that law or for you the universe breaks
around you and is shattered.

Vitality: reprise
Follett sought integration because it involved invention ± creative experience
(Follett, 1940, p. 33). ``Compromise does not create, it deals with what already
exists. Integration creates something new'' (Follett, 1940, p. 35). She rejected
collective bargaining for its persistent identification of sides: ``[I]t has no real
vitality as it does not create'' (Follett, 1940, p. 72). Although her thought was
complex ± interrelating philosophy, political theory, psychology, and everyday
life ± in one sense it boiled down to this simple observation, ``The fundamental
law of the universe is the increase of life''. By the same token, Follett argued
that ``legitimate power'' was produced only by circular behavior and integration
(Follett, 1940, p. 104), and that the workplace had to be a site where equals came
together, for in ``cross functioning'' [the interdependent organization] a man is
constantly meeting his equals . . . And this . . . gives a man a much greater sense
of responsibility (Follett, 1940, p. 164). In this way, ``an organization . . . gives
scope for the development of individuality'' (Follett, 1940, p. 164). Relating
``frees and integrates and creates'' (Follett, 1924, pp. 130-1):
Creates what? Always fresh possibilities for the human soul: expressed in new tariff laws or
shorter hours of work or cooperative banks or whatever it may be. The political problem,
then, is not how to obtain ``consent'', but how to open the way for the creating relation between
man and man.

Follett had strong words to express her vision of an individual and collective
life which was in fact dedicated to life. ``Our new motto must be, Live in such a
manner that the fulness of life may come to all'' (Follett, 1918,p. 353). The
essence of this manner of living is creative experience, which is the self in
relation (Follett, 1918, p. 192). Her closing passage to The New State makes this
clear (Follett, 1918, p. 360):
This book is a plea for the more abundant life: for the fullness of life and the growing life. It is
a plea against everything static, against the idea that there need be any passive material
within the social bond. It is a plea for a splendid progress dependent upon every splendid one
of us. We need a new faith in humanity, not a sentimental faith or a theological tenet or a
philosophical conception, but an active faith in that creative power of men which shall shape
government and industry, which shall give form equally to our daily life with our neighbor
and to a world league.
Closing reflections Integrating
Many theories are advanced to explain management theory's relative lack of Follett
attention to Follett: her gender, the difficulty of her writing, the complexity of
her ideas. I think much of her history has to do with her political incorrectness.
She was a Hegelian at a time when the power of the state, particularly the
German state, was increasingly suspect. She lived during a time when appeals
to ``joint representation'' and ``joint control'' became increasingly identified with 187
socialism, which itself fell increasingly out of favor. For example, industrial
democracy as a concept became increasingly linked to ``the propaganda of trade
unionists, socialists, and social reformers'' (Leiserson, 1924, p. 149). Tead was a
member of the League for Industrial Democracy, a socialist group
(Montgomery, 1987, p. 421). Dewey was also a socialist (Westbrook, 1991,
p. 430). Eugene Debs had, early on, drawn a conceptual link between the
``democratic character of American government'' and industrial life by means of
``state sponsored collectivization'' (Montgomery, 1987, p. 425). Follett's thought,
although it emerged in full relationship to the context in which she lived, was in
many ways incompatible with it ± particularly when we consider the 1920s and
1930s as a time when management asserted its authority over the workplace
(Montgomery, 1979, p. 4; Bendix, 1956) and psychological experts replaced a
popular interest in workplace practices with programs for ``individual
adjustment'' (Chambers, 1963, pp. 95-6). Perhaps with the end of the Red Scare
and the Cold War, Follett has finally found a congenial time, for her work is
increasingly seen as relevant (Calas and Smircich, 1996; Eylon, 1996; Graham,
1995).
In turn, it is difficult for contemporary readers to appreciate Follett's
contribution for two main reasons: First, our knowledge of her work has not
been placed in relationship to the historical contexts and controversies of 75
years ago in which she made it: In real terms, the emergence of industrial
capitalism in tandem with a perceived threat to democratic traditions and
practices; in intellectual terms, a vital place for philosophy and political theory
in discussions about organized action. Reading Follett in this context may be
instructive in light of globalization. Follett's concerns about classical liberalism
parallel the concerns expressed by countries such as Japan and France, now
experiencing the tug-of-war between the global market metaphor and their
traditional rejection of classical liberalism. Follett's ideas point the way to a
reconciliation between community and capitalism, and ± even today ± ``new''
economic models. Second, despite the rhetoric of ``boundarylessness'' (what
Follett would call integration) which surrounds us, we have, ironically, few
models to demonstrate what ``boundarylessness'' means philosophically and
practically. Here are a few of the boundaries Follett crossed. First, she engaged
herself deeply in some of the most controversial debates of her time; whereas
even present leaders in our field find grounds to question the relevance of
management theory and thought (e.g. Hambrick, 1993). Second, she knew
history well and explicitly placed herself in a historical tradition, another
sensibility largely absent from existing management theory (Kieser, 1994;
JMH Shils, 1981) despite the acknowledged importance of history for decision
6,4 making (Neustadt and May, 1986). Third, she developed a theory of
management that was infused with and embedded in classical philosophy; but
she grounded this theory in business and management, domains that are now
relatively severed from philosophy and impoverished as a result (Zald, 1996).
Finally, simply put, her theories derived from her assertion that the purpose of
188 the organization was to serve ``the increase of life''. This fundamental warrant is
not often invoked in contemporary management theory. In all these respects,
Follett's integrations, both in theory and in practice, were less ``ahead of her
time'' (Calas and Smircich, 1996) than they are of ours.

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