1. My meaning of the statement of Mary Parker Follett
To rightly explain the meaning of this statement, the words have to be defined as they give all the significance.
First, as Grey (2009) underlined it, the etymology of to manage comes from the French ménager and the Italian maneggiare. Both have the same Latin origin, the word manus, “hand” in English, and both basically means to handle. One is in a household context while the other is about horse handling. Grey (2009) added that this origin gives to management “the sense that it is something dispersed, done by everyone” and we can still find this notion nowadays when we say for example I managed to eat a spoon full of mustard. Consequently, in an organisation, what does distinguish managers from average workers? There are different interpretations of the differentiation between the two groups. Nevertheless, a good notion to help in that way is the conception of power that managers have over workers. Here are two examples to illustrate my words. On the one hand, according to Braverman (1974), in Taylorism theory, managers have a monopoly of power over workers, as there is a transfer of knowledge from craftsmen to the management due to the separation between conception and execution. As for Grey (1999), the development of management as a specific discipline can be seen through three different points of view, according to the historical and economic context, which are technical, elite and political. If they give a different explanation of it, they are all about power whose origin can come either from technical knowledge, social classes or control of labour.
That is how I understand management in this statement and it is even reinforced with the “done through people” of the statement that implicitly suggest certain subordination.
Secondly, I would like to clarify my understating of the word “art”. It evokes me more the meaning of a skill or a special ability than poetry or music. Moreover, art, as an expression