CONCEPT
Depersonalize the Order
Follett's provocative prescription — take the personal sting out of the order by uniting all concerned in a study of the situation — which she later clarified as repersonalization: embedding persons more deeply in the work rather than removing them.
Mary Parker Follett's 1925 prescription for the giving of orders — 'depersonalize the order, unite all concerned in a study of the situation, discover the law of the situation, and obey that.' The formulation is radical in its implications: under the law of the situation, 'the employee can issue it to the employer, as well as employer to employee.' Authority flows from the situation, not the person. The manager who articulates the situational requirement is a messenger, not a commander. But Follett later clarified that the principle is not depersonalizing but repersonalizing — embedding persons more deeply in the situation rather than removing them from it. The distinction is critical for AI, which can appear to depersonalize decisions while actually stripping away the human context that gives decisions meaning.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The distinction between depersonalizing and repersonalizing is critical for AI governance. Algorithmic systems that claim to 'depersonalize'