Looking for "The Giving of Orders" (1926)

[Rachel Miller]

Hi all! I have just discovered this network - what a great idea! I'm researching Follett and have become a big fan in the process. However, I can't find "The Giving of Orders." I have found it referenced many places, but no database of my school's library can find the text. Any ideas?

[Matthew Shapiro]

Rachel - You need look no further than this website. Scroll down the list of Discussions to the earliest ones. There is one called "Follett Writings: Dynamic Administration." Within that collection is "The Giving of Orders." Dynamic Administration is a collection of Follett's work that was first published in 1940.

- M.S.

[Rachel Miller]

Wonderful! Thanks so much! :)

Matthew Shapiro said:

Rachel - You need look no further than this website. Scroll down the list of Discussions to the earliest ones. There is one called "Follett Writings: Dynamic Administration." Within that collection is "The Giving of Orders." Dynamic Administration is a collection of Follett's work that was first published in 1940.

- M.S.

[Albie M. Davis]

Hi Rachel, Welcome!

For a slightly different take on the "Giving of orders" you might scroll down to find a copy of Feedom and Coordination: Lectures in Business Organization, by Mary Parker Follett. My own marked up copy is by Garland Publishing, Inc., New York ~ London, 1987, first published in 1949. Edited and with an Introduction by Lyndal Urwick.

Five of the six lectures in this book were delivered by Follett in January and February 1933 to the newly-formed Department of Business Administration at the London School of Economics (University of London). She has adjusted her 1926 talk on The Giving of Orders for her British audience.

Here's a sample from page 35.

I was having a talk a little while ago with the head of a large corporation. His telephone bell rang. He took up the receiver and said in answer to some question,"My secretary decides that, she knows much more about it than I do." Just the other day the head of a big organisation here in London came to one of his heads of departments, this woman told me, and said, " I've come for my orders." She was much amused, but this wasn't a pleasantry on his part. It was simply a recognition that she knew more about the matter in hand than he did.

I like this copy because on page 26 she says, "I know a lady who posted over her sink in her kitchen the proper sequence of dish-washing." She goes on to make her point about developing such rules in concert with those who are to follow them. I was fortunate to visit the current owner of the home that Follett and Briggs lived in for 30 summers in Putney, Vermont. She sold the house in 1927, the summer after Isobel died and left all her furniture behind, including a sign about the proper order of doing dishes. I love this evidence of how Follett was always "on duty" learning of human relating from everything going on around her, including her home life.

Enjoy, Albie Davis