"Since I have been in England I have been asked several times why I am studying business management. I will try to tell you. Free to choose between different paths of study, I have chosen this for a number of reasons. First of all, it is among businessmen (not all, but a few) that I find the greatest vitality of thinking to-day, and I like to do my thinking where it is most alive. I said last winter to a Professor of Philosophy: 'Do you realize that you philosophers have got to look to your laurels, that businessmen are doing some very valuable thinking and may get ahead of you?' And he acknowledged this, which I think was a very significant concession. Moreover, I find the thinking of businessmen to-day in line with the deepest and best thinking we have ever had. The last word in science—in biology—is the principle of unifying. The most profound philosophers have always given us unifying as the fundamental principle of life. And now business men are finding it is the way to run a successful business. Here the ideal and the practical have joined hands. That is why I am working at business management, because, while I care for the ideal, it is only because I want to help bring it into our everyday affairs."
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Women academics from the United StatesWomen from the United StatesBusiness theorists from the United StatesSociologists from the United StatesPeople from Boston
Original Language: English
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p. xix-xx
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mary_Parker_Follett
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Mary Parker Follett
1868 – 1933
(September 3, 1868 – December 18, 1933) was an American social worker, management consultant and pioneer in the fields of organizational theory and organizational behavior.
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