Mary Parker Follett

Creative Experience

Creative Experience (1924) while carrying forward a number of the themes developed in The New State (1918) reflects Mary Parker Follett's growing interest in the problems of industrial relations and the realm of management. She has the same commitment to democracy and encounter, but the focus is now on, as the title suggests, the creative use of experience. In this, David W. Stewart (1987: 145) suggests, her approach was basically that of a pragmatist, 'though she emphasized--and placed higher value on--the creative rather than the verifying aspects of experience'.

Experience is the power-house where purposes and will, thought and ideals, are being generated. I am not of course denying that the main process of life is that of testing, verifying, comparing. To compare and to select is always the process of education. . . When you get to a situation it becomes what it was plus you; you are responding to the situation plus yourself, that is, to the relation between it and yourself... Life is not a movie for us; you can never watch life because you are always in life... [T]he 'progressive integrations,' the ceaseless interweavings of new specific respondings, is the whole forward moving of existence; there is no adventure for those who stand at the counters of life and match samples. (Follett 1924: 133-134)

Follett's is a philosophy of engagement and encounter. Through thinking about our experiences, questioning their meaning and truth and looking to the people we are, it is possible to learn. But there can be dangers in this process if approached narrowly.

The people who 'learn by experience' often make great messes of their lives, that is, if they apply what they have learned from a past incident to the present, deciding from certain appearances that the circumstances are the same, forgetting that no two situations can ever be the same... All that I am, all that life has made me, every past experience that I have had - woven into the tissue of my life - I must give to the new experience. That past experience has indeed not been useless, but its use is not in guiding present conduct by past situations. We must put everything we can into each fresh experience, but we shall not get the same things out which we put in if it is a fruitful experience, if it is part of our progressing life... We integrate our experience, and then the richer human being that we are goes into the new experience; again we give ourself and always by giving rise above the old self. (Follett 1924: 136-137)

What we have here is the difference in Follett's terms between a 'mechanical and creating intelligence' (op. cit.) (which in turn mirrors the distinction Aristotle makes between technical and practical reasoning).

Mary Parker Follett on power and management

From the publication of Creative Experience to her death in 1933 Mary Parker Follett was best known for her work around the administration and management of organizations. In 1925, she presented an influential paper, 'The Psychological Foundations of Business Administration' to executives at the annual conference of the Bureau of Personnel Administration in New York. She argued that the ideas she had been developing with regard to communities could equally be applied to organizations (we have seen a similar shift in recent years around the notion of social capital). Organizations, like communities, could be approached as local social systems involving networks of groups. In this way Mary Parker Follett was able to advocate the fostering of a 'self-governing principle' that would facilitate 'the growth of individuals and of the groups to which they belonged'. By directly interacting with one another to achieve their common goals, the members