10: Content Analysis of the Writings of Mary Parker Follett

This study is the first computer-assisted content analysis of the writings of Mary Parker Follett, a political scientist and social worker with a substantial following among business leaders over 80 years ago. Her ideas are echoed in quality circles, empowerment, horizontal structures, and social networks as they are discussed in leadership theory and practice today. Ahead of her time, Drucker (1995) dubbed Follett the “prophet of management” (p. 1) for her forward thinking. The purpose of this research was to discover the major constructs and their relationships to one another in the published writings of Mary Parker Follett using content analysis and to identify the relevance of these concepts to contemporary leadership theory and practice.