Voices From the Past: Mary Parker Follett and Joseph Smith on Collaborative Leadership

Abstract

The postwar literature has yielded important insights regarding developing collaborative leadership competencies in managers and collaborative leadership systems within organizations. However, the work of pre—World War II scholars and practitioners in this area has largely been overlooked. After introductory “interviews” with Mary P. Follett and Joseph Smith, we review their frameworks of collaborative leadership. Drawing on their frameworks of collaborative leadership, the authors propose an extension to Raelin’s (2006) framework of collaborative leadership and discuss the implications of this extended framework for current efforts in developing collaborative leadership in organizations