Follett, Mary Parker (1868–1933)

US social worker and management theorist. She founded several Boston boys' and young men's clubs and pioneered the use of schools as community centres. She wrote and lectured on industrial relations and management, laying the groundwork for modern management practices.

She was born in Quincy, Massachusetts. A believer in using community organizations to foster understanding among different social and occupational groups, she proposed in The New State (1918) that community-based groups, rather than political parties, underpin democratic political organization. Through her vocational guidance work with the Boston school board and elsewhere, she moved into industry. She coined the terms ‘togetherness’ and ‘group thinking’.