Jane Addams

Abstract This chapter examines Jane Addams’s care-centered approach to leadership and administration. Addams believed that government’s “ultimate purpose” was to secure the welfare of the people. Addams came to understand that caring for one another must define social relations with the political community if democracy is to have genuine meaning and substance for all citizens. This chapter examines the central elements that comprise Addams’s care-centered approach to leading and managing, her vision of a democratic community focused on care and social justice, and her process of collective democratic problem-solving driven by sympathetic understanding and affectionate interpretation. The chapter then examines the problematic marketization of care and community under neoliberalism and concludes by arguing for the need today to adopt Addams’s democratic perspective on care and community if all citizens are to enjoy a decent life.