Mary Parker Follett Quotes
A fatal defect in majority rule is that by its very nature it abolishes itself. Majority rule must inevitably become minority rule: the majority is too big to handle itself; it organizes itself into committees ... which in their turn resolve themselves into a committee of one.
Follett, Mary Parker. The New State: Group Organization the Solution of Popular Government. Longmans, Green and Co., 1918, p. 147.
The Mohawk, as well as the other Iroquois nations had several interesting democratic elements to their governance system some of which Benjamin Franklin tried to introduce into Pennsylvania and nationally. Particularly interesting is the European perspective of the minister who describes the de facto requirement for a type of plebiscite ratification in derogatory terms referring to the people as “the mob”. Some have argued that at the time the most democratic nation on earth was the Iroquois nation.
Mary Parker Follett was an American social worker, management consultant, philosopher and pioneer in the fields of organizational theory and organizational behavior. Along with Lillian Gilbreth, she was one of two great women management experts in the early days of classical management theory. She has been called the "Mother of Modern Management". Instead of emphasizing industrial and mechanical components, she advocated for what she saw as the far more important human element, regarding people as the most valuable commodity present within any business. She was one of the first theorists to actively write about and explore the role people had on effective management, and discuss the importance of learning to deal with and promote positive human relations as a fundamental aspect of the industrial sector.
