Creative Experience

Mary Parker Follett

• Editorial: Left of Brain Books
• Año: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781396319112
• Categoría: Psychology
• Categoría: Industrial & Organizational Psychology

Discover why the author of this book was given the title "The Prophet of Management"!Mary Parker Follett introduced her revolutionary ideas on industrial management and labor relations a century ago, inspiring major influence lasting until today on business administration.This book will show you democracy like you've never seen before. In a pragmatic approach, Follett bridges the gap between organizational goals and individual desire, giving insights on individual and group psychologies. It discusses the social and psychological implications of an unprecedented form of management based on spontaneous organization.She gives a definitive means to utilize experience, focusing on individual integrity."Life is not a movie for us; you can never watch life because you are always in life."
"The object of this book is to suggest that we seek a way by which desires may interweave, that we seek a method by which the full integrity of the individual shall be one with social progress, that we try to make our daily experience yield for us larger and ever larger spiritual values."
~Mary Follett

PART I

EXPERIENCE AS SELF-SUSTAINING AND
SELF-RENEWING PROCESS

 

 

I.

Vicarious Experience: are Experts the Revealers of Truth?

THE most striking characteristic of the thought of today is the trend toward objectivity: psychology has given us behaviorism, political scientists are emphasizing “accurate information” as the solution of all our difficulties, and jurists tell us that law must rest not on abstract principles but on social facts.

The present apotheosis of the expert, the ardent advocacy of “facts,” needs some analysis. The question of democracy is often discussed on the assumption that we are obliged to choose between the rule of that modern beneficent despot, the expert, and a muddled, befogged “people.” If the question were as simple as that, most of our troubles would be over; we should have only to get enough Intelligence Bureaus at Washington, enough scientific management into the factories, enough specialists (on hygiene, transportation, etc.) into the cities, enough formulæ from the agricultural colleges into the country, and all life would become fair and beautiful. For the people, it is assumed, will gladly agree to become automata when we show them all the things—nice, solid, objective things—they can have by abandoning their own experience in favor of a superior race of men called experts.

While I am sure that in the present appreciation of “facts” we have the most hopeful promise for our confessedly fumbling world, the most needed corrective for certain attitudes of mind into which we have fallen, while I know from experience that we often waste time in conference arguing about things that are ascertainable, still there are several points which must be remembered: it is of equal importance with the discovery of facts to know what to do with them; our job is to apportion, not usurp, function (the “people” have a place, what is it?); and also we must warn ourselves that a little of the ready reliance on the expert comes from the desire to waive responsibility, comes from the endless evasion of life instead of an honest facing of it. The expert is to many what the priest is, someone who knows absolutely and can tell us what to do. The king, the priest, the expert, have one after the other had our allegiance, but so far as we put any of them in the place of ourselves, we have not a sound society and neither individual nor general progress.

To overemphasize the importance of the expert would be impossible, but after we have fully recognized his value to society, there still remains to be considered the legitimate relation between expert and people. For a generation the slogan has been investigation, research, survey of cities, scientific management, social engineering, etc. Yet through all this steadily increasing appreciation of facts, the question that has recurred to us again and again has been: what is the relation of all this to the rank and file of the people? This is what is in the mind of the president of the industrial plant as he reads the report of his scientific manager; everyone who has taken part in any municipal reform finds this the crux of his problem.

I do not think that the solution of this problem is to be found in that doctrine known as “the consent of the governed.” To divide society on the one side into the expert and the governors basing their governing on his reports, and on the other the people consenting, is, I believe, a disaster-courting procedure. Yet this does not mean, on the other hand, that “the people” are to be unduly exalted. Formerly the supporters of democracy, concerned with the machinery of government, aimed to find those forms which should give voice to “the people,” but for some time now we have not given much thought to this consideration: the thinkers certainly have not, and the community centre movement, the workmen’s education movement, the coӧperative movement, to mention only two or three, are not based on the assumption that the will of the people is “instinctively” good, and that our institutions exist merely to get at this will, to give it voice, etc. The essential aim of these, the most democratic movements we have, is to train ourselves, to learn how to use the work of experts, to find our will, to educate our will, to integrate our wills.

The greatest flaw in the form the theory of consent sometimes takes today is the assumption that the automatic result of scientific investigation is the overcoming of difference. This view both fails to see the importance of diversity, and also ignores the fact that the accumulation of information does not overcome diversity. This seems to me a point sufficiently important to warrant some consideration. Daily, hourly I might say, we see the failure of facts to produce unanimity of opinion. Our Supreme Courts try honestly to get the facts of each case, but the result is not unanimous decision. Boards are constantly sitting which employ experts and then view and discuss the facts obtained; those who have sat on such Boards know that difference of opinion has not been overcome. It is always the inexperienced man on the Board who brings in his “facts” and expects that the impasse of the previous meeting will be removed. Can you not see him in your various memories, smiling round at his companions in this happy expectation? And can you not see that smile gradually fade as the expectation fails?

We need experts, we need accurate information, but the object is not to do away with difference but to do away with muddle. When for lack of facts you and I are responding to a different situation—you to the situation as you imagine it, I to the situation as I imagine it—we cannot of course come to agreement. What accurate information does is to clear the ground for genuine difference and therefore make possible, I do not say make sure, agreement. The object of accurate information is not to overcome difference but to give legitimate play to difference. If I think I am looking at a black snake and you think it is a fallen branch, our talk will be merely chaotic. But after we have decided that it is a snake, we do not then automatically agree what to do with it. You and I may respond quite differently to “black snake”: shall we run away, or kill it, or take it home and make a pet of it to kill the mice? There is now some basis for significant difference. Difference based on inaccuracy is meaningless. We have not done away with difference, but we have provided the possibility for fruitful difference.

To be sure, we need certain scientific information to help us make this decision. We shall have less tendency to run away when we learn that black snakes are not poisonous; but then we learn that they belong to the constrictor class, and some of us do not like even harmless snakes wound round our throats; still the risk of that is slight and my house is overrun with mice and another scientist tells me both that you can make pets of black snakes and that they are our best mice-hunters. And so on and so on. I am dwelling on this point because I want to make it clear that I think the possibility of a wise decision depends on just as much scientific information as we can acquire. I wholly agree that the number of decisions people are willing to make daily without such information is amazing, and yet I think that after we have obtained the greatest amount possible, there will still be difference, and that dealing with difference is the main part of the social process. President Lowell, in his recent book Public Opinion in Peace and War, says: “It might be supposed that men of equal intelligence without prejudice or bias would on the same evidence reach the same conclusion, but this is by no means always true.”⁵ The effect of the impact of facts upon us is not automatic, instantaneous and idea-levelling.

Moreover, the difficulty of seeming accurate information is very great as evidenced by the frequency with which experts disagree. Two experts talking together do not always impress us with their unanimity. We have most of us listened to the “facts” produced at legislative hearings by the experts on both sides. And the whole history of our courts gives multitudinous evidence in regard to the expert. Recall the testimony in negligence cases. In a suit brought a few months ago on account of an elevator accident, of two experts called in to judge the tensile strength of the cable, the expert on one side testified, after examination of the strands, that the condition of the cable was such as to make it reasonable to expect that the cable would not break; the other testified exactly the opposite. Again, a large molasses tank owned by the United States Industrial Alcohol Company exploded, doing much damage to life and property in the neighborhood. In the cases which resulted, testimony was taken from Harvard and Technology experts. The expert on one side testified that the fragments of steel plates of which the tank was composed showed that the force causing the explosion came from within; the expert on the other side, that it came from without, as, it might be, from a bomb. Of course the question of liability depended largely on this testimony. In the case of medical experts, the fact of two doctors of equal reputation giving directly opposed testimony makes many cases arising from accidents difficult to adjudicate. But we need not enlarge on the diverse testimony of experts in the courts, it is a matter of almost daily experience for every lawyer and judge.⁶ Fact-finding bristles with difficulties. Let us look at some of the practical difficulties involved.⁷

Many seem to imagine the expert as completely denatured: one who has no emotions, no interests, no memories and associations. Is there an island where such a race dwells?⁸ But waiving for the moment that different experts report quite differently on a situation, that they may have their prejudices, interests, stereotypes, that they too often seem mortal and find what they expect to find, or what “the habits of their eyes” lead them to see, or what fits in with their philosophy or moral code; waiving for the moment too that we have all known Commissions where the experts chosen to collect the information required were very carefully picked beforehand according to their probable or known leanings—waiving all this, still some difficulties arise.

First, facts do not remain stationary. A situation changes faster than anyone can report on it. The developing possibilities of certain factors must be so keenly perceived that we get the report of a process not a picture, and when it is necessary to present to us a stage in the process, it should be presented in such a way that we see the hints it contains of successive stages. Dean Pound, in speaking of the writing of legal history in the last part of the nineteenth century, says: “The details of legal and political institutions were described … so faithfully as they stood in detail on a given day that they had ceased so to stand before the book was off the press.”⁹

Moreover, names remain the same when what they stand for has changed. It often takes a nimble mind to perceive this.

Then of great importance is the danger of the expert’s labels. When we are told of the accurate pictures of the expert, we remember that there are people who take their cameras to séances and then show us their photographs as conclusive proof of spirit faces! But these are accurate pictures, for “the camera does not lie.” The retina of your eye, too, may not lie, but if you see a man strike his friend on the face, it is better to restrain your indignation until you find out whether he was perhaps killing a mosquito. An unprejudiced investigator says: “I am showing you a picture of men fighting for an eight-hour day.” But perhaps the men were struggling for something else, such as higher wages or self-direction. You may say that the expert need not label his pictures. He is hardly ever known not to do so; our very language, overlaid with the ideas and emotions of the race, prevents it.

We must remember also that expert or official can choose which fact, of two, he will present to us. To say nothing of partisan assortment of facts, experts emphasize the one which fits into present needs or interests. For instance, when there is a scarcity of white flour, we are told that brown is much more nourishing; when white flour is plentiful, we are told that as it is more easily assimilated we really get more nourishment out of it.

We could carry this thought much further, for it is, from one point of view, the thing most necessary to remember in any analysis of fact-finding, namely, that the interpretation of facts depends on needs. The interpretation of existence has always and will always serve our needs. The perception of facts, our “attention,” is determined by our needs or desires. The amoeba feels the internal drive of hunger and wraps itself round something which stills the hunger and this henceforth becomes “food” for him. He has discriminated between food and the acid in the upper part of the pool. In our own life, while the process is infinitely more complex, it is still the same: discrimination always goes on pari passu with needs. The satisfaction of human needs is the fundamental law of human existence. Since Freud, the importance of the “wish” has been before everyone’s eyes, but many advocates of fact-finding have not seen the significance of the Freudian “wish” in its relation to the interpretation of facts.

As this is of great importance, let me state it again a little differently. Facts become such for us when we attend to them. Our attending to them is bound up in the situation. The kind of objectivity which some of the fact-worshippers are endlessly seeking will be endlessly hidden from them. We want, we say, “impartial,” “impersonal” investigation of a fact, but the significance of that fact, by all the yet-known laws of the universe, must be part of the “wish” which demanded the “disinterested” (l) investigation. The implications of a psychology based on the “wish” are many and far-reaching.

Moreover, we often see the confusing of part of the facts with all the facts. No matter how accurate information is, if it is partial, decisions based upon it will be disastrous. In a book on business education containing problems for the student, his answer to one problem is expected to depend on the “fact,” explicitly stated in the text as a “fact,” that you can sell more soap at six cents than at seven. A business man I know was much amused at this; it assumed, he said, that the other firms died meanwhile. What happens as a matter of “fact” when you reduce your soap from seven to six cents is that your competitors reduce it to five and three-fourths, and the question arises as to what you are going to do then. One activity leads to another, and the “fact” is sometimes as elusive as the button in the children’s game. As ardent an advocate of fact-finding as anyone, I want merely to insist that we must know what we mean by “fact” in any given situation, that we must not base our action on too narrow an outlook on the field of facts. Perhaps this point could best be summed up by saying that to view facts in relation to one another is of the utmost importance, and that fact-finding and fact-presentation must take this very seriously into account.

One might go further and say that the value of every fact depends on its position in the whole world-process, is bound up in its multitudinous relations. One might go further still and say that a fact out of relation is not a fact. Yet not all experts can see the relation. What has made the great decisions of the American bench great is that their authors have seen the relation of the facts before them to the whole structure of our social life, including its present stage of development and its ideals. As Mr. Justice Holmes says, “[it is not] the acquisition of facts [which is important] but learning how to make facts live ... leap into an organic order, live and bear fruit.”

I might connect with this point a crude use of facts which misrelates them to the situation, for things to be “facts” must be facts within the same field. That fire consumes is a fact, but it is not a fact for this book. Thus statistics and facts are not necessarily synonymous, but subtle estimates, comprehensive boundaries of vision will be required in order to decide what is a fact for the situation.

Moreover, those who wish conclusions to be drawn always from precise measurements, forget that many of our problems defy the possibility of precise measurement. For instance, what is the minimum a girl can live on “in health and decency?”—the phrase used in the Massachusetts Minimum Wage Law.

Another difficulty which should be taken into account in fact-finding is the limited opportunity of the mere observer; different facts are usually elicited by the participant-observer. That is, experiment rather than mere observation often illumines facts, or is the best way of getting at facts. As an illustration of the participant-observer I might cite Prof. William Z. Ripley who, as chairman of the National Adjustment Commission during the war, elicited facts, handled facts and created facts.

The following warning it would perhaps seem superfluous to give if I had not several times recognized its necessity while reading certain expert reports which seemed to be based on the notion that the scaffolding of a situation constitutes the facts. Facts must be understood as the whole situation with whatever sentiments, beliefs, ideals enter into it. The facts of the trade union are not the external organization, its constitution and by-laws, nor yet the strike, in its external features; these are the mere scaffolding of the facts of trade unionism. That this has not always been fully appreciated by investigators is the cause of some of our misunderstanding in regard to trade unionism.

Another very real danger in fact-finding is that while you or I may both be responding to fact, we may be responding to quite different kinds of fact. For instance, I sat on a Board last winter where employers, employees and public coӧperated to fix a wage scale to be based on the cost of living, taking into consideration what that particular industry could stand. It soon developed, however, that to a number on the Board cost of living and the condition of the industry were by no means the main facts of the situation, but the relative strength at that moment of labor and capital. When those members brought in a demand for a minimum wage of $21.40, these figures did not represent the cost of living in Boston in 1922, they represented an estimate of labor strength in Boston in 1922. But this also was certainly a fact. Let us not be too naïve about facts.

Facts have intimate connection with the whole question of power. Parallel to the history of the use of facts must be written the history of the use of power. Think of the cave-man standing over his fallen foe. The prostrate savage might say, if he were a passionate fact-finder, “Let us look at the facts: it’s a big bear, we can divide it and there will be enough for both of us; moreover, if you will study the scientific tables for the nutritive qualities of bear-meat, you will find that you need less of this creature than you thought.” But the cave-man would surely reply, “If you want to consider facts, the most important one for you to give your attention to is that I can kill you in another minute; that is the fact that gives me the whole of the bear.” As this is the way our international conferences and many others are conducted at the present moment, it seems to me indisputable that the last word has not yet been said about fact-finding, or at least about facts producing unity. The integrating of facts and power is possible, but it would mean a different code from that by which we are at present living. Nations are at present power-organizations; trade unions are power-organizations; manufacturers’ associations are power-...