Leadership For Social Change: Mary Parker Follett and Jane Addams

According to Hilarie Owen the time for Folletts ideas has arrived & (2012 158) and indeed Folletts writing on cooperative leadership and followership continues to be relevant today, as it was 100 years ago. Folletts contemporary, Jane Addams, also found Folletts work useful, and used Folletts concept of action-based leadership to describe her own work in her 1930 book, Second Twenty Years at Hull House. However, Addams work for social change started long before Follett started writing about leadership. Addamss work in the Chicago Hull House neighborhood, her national work for womens suffrage and her international peace work resulting in the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize provides important models of social change methodology. This paper is a comparative analysis of the leadership styles of these two women, examining both strengths and weaknesses and their relevance to todays social issues