Abstract

Mary Parker Follett is a relatively unknown quality leader. She was a major contributor to the growing understanding of management as a profession in Britain and the United States throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s. Other quality leaders such as Walter Shewhart, W. Edwards Deming and Joseph Juran drew from Follett’s work to lay the foundation for the quality discipline. Follett deserves to be recognized as one of the founders of the quality movement whose work inspired later quality champions and led to the establishment of the quality profession.