Peter Ferdinand Drucker (November 19, 1909–November 11, 2005) was a writer, management consultant, and self-described “social ecologist.” His books and scholarly and popular articles explored how humans are organized across the business, government and the nonprofit sectors of society. His writings have predicted many of the major developments of the late twentieth century, including privatization and decentralization; the rise of Japan to economic world power; the decisive importance of marketing; and the emergence of the information society with its necessity of lifelong learning. In 1959, Drucker coined the term “
knowledge workerA knowledge worker in today's workforce is an individual that is valued for their ability to interpret information within a specific subject area. They will often advance the overall understanding of that subject through focused analysis, design and/or development. They use research skills to...
" and later in his life considered
knowledge work productivityKnowledge work productivity is the measure of the efficiency and effectiveness of the output generated by workers who mainly rely on knowledge, rather than labor, during the production process...
to be the next frontier of management.
Personal life and roots of his philosophy
The son of a high-level civil servant in
Austria-HungaryAustria–Hungary, also known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the k.u.k. Monarchy, or Dual State, was a monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in Central Europe...
– his mother Caroline Bondi had studied medicine and his father
Steve Anderson-Entertainment:*Stephen J. Anderson, Disney animated film director*Steve Anderson , musician and songwriter*Steve Anderson , British musician-Sports:*Steve Anderson, birth name of American professional wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin...
Drucker was a lawyer – Drucker was born in
ViennaVienna is the capital of the Republic of Austria and also one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.7 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre. It is the 10th largest city by...
, the capital of
AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.3 million people in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west...
, in a small village named Kaasgraben (now part of the 19th district of
ViennaVienna is the capital of the Republic of Austria and also one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.7 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre. It is the 10th largest city by...
,
DöblingDöbling is the 19th District in the city of Vienna, Austria . It is located on the north end from the central districts, north of the districts Alsergrund and Währing...
). He grew up in a home where intellectuals, high government officials, and scientists would meet to discuss new ideas. After graduating from Döbling Gymnasium, Drucker found few opportunities for employment in post-Habsburg Vienna, so he moved to
HamburgHamburg is the second-largest city in Germany and the sixth-largest city in the European Union...
,
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
, first working as an apprentice at an established cotton trading company, then as a journalist, writing for
Der Österreichische Volkswirt (
The Austrian Economist). Drucker then moved to
FrankfurtFrankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2008 population of 670,000. The urban area had an estimated population of 2.26 million in 2001...
, where he took a job at the Daily
Frankfurter General-Anzeiger. While in Frankfurt, he also earned a doctorate in
international lawPublic international law concerns the structure and conduct of sovereign states, analogous entities, such as the Holy See, and intergovernmental organizations. To a lesser degree, international law also may affect multinational corporations and individuals, an impact increasingly evolving beyond...
and public law from the
University of FrankfurtUniversity of Frankfurt may refer to several German universities:*Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main in Frankfurt am Main...
in 1931. Among his early influences was the Austrian economist
Joseph SchumpeterJoseph Alois Schumpeter was an economist and political scientist born in Moravia, then Austria-Hungary, now Czech Republic. He popularized the term "creative destruction" in economics.-Life:...
, a friend of his father’s, who impressed upon Drucker the importance of
innovationAn innovation is a new way of doing something. It may refer to incremental and emergent or radical and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations. Following Schumpeter , contributors to the scholarly literature on innovation typically distinguish between invention, an...
and
entrepreneurshipEntrepreneurship is the act of being an entrepreneur which is a French word meaning one who undertakes an endeavor. Entrepreneurs assemble resources including innovations, finance and business acumen in an effort to transform innovations into economic goods. This may result in new organizations...
. Drucker also was influenced, in a much different way, by
John Maynard KeynesJohn Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, CB was a British economist whose ideas have been a central influence on modern macroeconomics, both in theory and practice...
, whom he heard lecture in 1934 in
CambridgeThe city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. It is also at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen....
. “I suddenly realized that Keynes and all the brilliant economic students in the room were interested in the behavior of commodities,” Drucker wrote, “while I was interested in the behavior of people.”
Over the next 70 years, Drucker’s writings would be marked by a focus on relationships among human beings, as opposed to the crunching of numbers. His books were filled with lessons on how organizations can bring out the best in people, and how workers can find a sense of community and dignity in a modern society organized around large institutions.
As a young writer, Drucker wrote two pieces — one on the conservative German philosopher
Friedrich Julius StahlFriedrich Julius Stahl , German ecclesiastical lawyer and politician, was born at Munich, of Jewish parentage....
and another called “
The Jewish Question in Germany” — that were burned and banned by the Nazis. In 1933, Drucker left Germany for England. In
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
, he worked for an insurance company, then as the chief economist at a private bank. He also reconnected with Doris Schmitz, an acquaintance from the University of Frankfurt. They married in 1934. (His wedding certificate lists his name as Peter Georg Drucker.) The couple permanently relocated to the United States, where he became a university professor as well as a free-lance writer and
businessA business is a legally recognized organization designed to provide goods and/or services to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, most being privately owned and formed to earn profit that will increase the wealth of its owners and grow the business itself...
consultant. (Drucker disliked the term “guru,” though it was often applied to him; “I have been saying for many years,” Drucker once remarked, “that we are using the word ‘guru’ only because ‘charlatan’ is too long to fit into a headline.”)
In 1943, Drucker became a naturalized citizen of the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. He taught at
Bennington CollegeBennington College is a liberal arts college located in Bennington, Vermont, USA. The college was founded in 1932 as a women's college and became co-educational in 1969.-History:-Early years:...
from 1942-1949, then at
New York UniversityNew York University is a private, nonsectarian, research university in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
as a Professor of
ManagementManagement in all business and human organization activity is simply the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives. Management comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leading, directing, facilitating and controlling or manipulating an organization or effort for...
from 1950 to 1971. Drucker came to California in 1971, where he developed one of the country's first executive
MBA programsThe Master of Business Administration is a master's degree in business administration, which attracts people from a wide range of academic disciplines. The MBA designation originated in the United States, emerging from the late 19th century as the country industrialized and companies sought out...
for working professionals at
Claremont Graduate UniversityClaremont Graduate University is a private graduate-only university. CGU is a member of the Claremont Colleges.- History :Founded in 1925, CGU was the second of the Claremont Colleges to form, following Pomona College and preceding Scripps College. Claremont Graduate University is the oldest...
(then known as Claremont Graduate School). From 1971 to his death he was the Clarke Professor of Social Science and
ManagementManagement in all business and human organization activity is simply the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives. Management comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leading, directing, facilitating and controlling or manipulating an organization or effort for...
at
Claremont Graduate UniversityClaremont Graduate University is a private graduate-only university. CGU is a member of the Claremont Colleges.- History :Founded in 1925, CGU was the second of the Claremont Colleges to form, following Pomona College and preceding Scripps College. Claremont Graduate University is the oldest...
. The university's management school was named the "Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management" (later known as the "
Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of ManagementThe Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management, or more commonly, the Drucker School of Management, is a member of the Claremont Colleges, which is a unique consortium of 7 colleges based on the Oxford University model...
") in his honor in 1987. He taught his last class at the school in 2002 at age 92.
Career
His career as a business thinker took off in 1942, when his initial writings on politics and society won him access to the internal workings of General Motors (GM), one of the largest companies in the world at that time. His experiences in
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
had left him fascinated with the problem of authority. He shared his fascination with
Donaldson BrownDonaldson Brown was a financial executive and corporate director with both DuPont and General Motors Corporation.He graduated from VPI in 1902, did graduate studies in engineering at Cornell University, and joined DuPont in 1909 as an explosives salesman.In 1912 he came to the attention of DuPont...
, the mastermind behind the administrative controls at GM. In 1943 Brown invited him in to conduct what might be called a "political audit": a two-year social-scientific analysis of the corporation. Drucker attended every board meeting, interviewed employees, and analyzed production and decision-making processes.
The resulting book,
Concept of the CorporationConcept of the Corporation is a book by management guru Peter Drucker published in 1946. It is widely held to be the first book of its kind.The book studies and analyses General Motors as a large social institution involved in business activities...
, popularized GM's multidivisional structure and led to numerous articles, consulting engagements, and additional books. GM, however, was hardly thrilled with the final product. Drucker had suggested that the auto giant might want to reexamine a host of long-standing policies on customer relations, dealer relations, employee relations and more. Inside the corporation, Drucker’s counsel was viewed as hypercritical. GM's revered chairman, Alfred Sloan, was so upset about the book that he “simply treated it as if it did not exist,” Drucker later recalled, “never mentioning it and never allowing it to be mentioned in his presence.”
Drucker taught that management is “a liberal art,” and he infused his management advice with interdisciplinary lessons from history, sociology, psychology, philosophy, culture and religion. He also believed strongly that all institutions, including those in the private sector, have a responsibility to the whole of society. “The fact is,” Drucker wrote in his 1973
Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, “that in modern society there is no other leadership group but managers. If the managers of our major institutions, and especially of business, do not take responsibility for the common good, no one else can or will.”
Drucker was interested in the growing effect of people who worked with their minds rather than their hands. He was intrigued by employees who knew more about certain subjects than their bosses or colleagues and yet had to cooperate with others in a large organization. Rather than simply glorify the phenomenon as the epitome of human progress, Drucker analyzed it and explained how it challenged the common thinking about how organizations should be run.
His approach worked well in the increasingly mature business world of the second half of the twentieth century. By that time, large corporations had developed the basic manufacturing efficiencies and managerial hierarchies of
mass productionMass production is the production of large amounts of standardized products, including and especially on assembly lines...
. Executives thought they knew how to run companies, and Drucker took it upon himself to poke holes in their beliefs, lest organizations become stale. But he did so in a sympathetic way. He assumed that his readers were intelligent, rational, hardworking people of good will. If their organizations struggled, he believed it was usually because of outdated ideas, a narrow conception of problems, or internal misunderstandings.
During his long consulting career, Drucker worked with many major corporations, including General Electric, Coca-Cola, Citicorp, IBM, and Intel. He consulted with notable business leaders such as GE’s Jack Welch; Procter & Gamble’s A.G. Lafley; Intel’s Andy Grove; Edward Jones’ John Bachmann; Shoichiro Toyoda, the honorary chairman of Toyota Motor Corp.; and
Masatoshi Itois the owner and honorary chairman of $30 billion Ito-Yokado retailing group, which includes more than 10,000 7-Elevens in Japan and the U.S....
, the honorary chairman of the Ito-Yokado Group, the second largest retailing organization in the world. Although he helped many corporate executives succeed, he was appalled when the level of Fortune 500 CEO pay in America ballooned to hundreds of times that of the average worker. He argued in a 1984 essay that CEO compensation should be no more than 20 times what the rank and file make — especially at companies where thousands of employees are being laid off. “This is morally and socially unforgivable,” Drucker wrote, “and we will pay a heavy price for it.”
Drucker served as a consultant for various government agencies in the United States, Canada and Japan. He worked with various nonprofit organizations to help them become successful, often consulting pro bono. Among the many social-sector groups he advised were the
Salvation ArmyThe Salvation Army, an international movement, describes itself as an armed evangelical movement part of the Christian Church. It has a quasi-military structure and was founded in 1865 in the United Kingdom as the East London Christian Liberation Mission by William and Catherine Booth. It is well...
, the
Girl Scouts of the USAThe Girl Scouts of the United States of America is a youth organization for girls in the United States and American girls living abroad...
,
C.A.R.E.CARE is one of the largest international relief and humanitarian organizations in the world, with programs in nearly 70 countries. CARE International secretariat is in Geneva, Switzerland...
, the
American Red CrossThe American Red Cross is a humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief and education inside the United States, and is the designated U.S...
, and the
NavajoThe Navajo Nation is a semi-autonomous Native American homeland covering about 26,000 square miles , occupying all of northeastern Arizona, the southeastern portion of Utah, and northwestern New Mexico...
Indian Tribal Council.
In fact, Drucker anticipated the rise of the social sector in America, maintaining that it was through volunteering in nonprofits that people would find the kind of fulfillment that he originally thought would be provided through their place of work, but that had proven elusive in that arena. “Citizenship in and through the social sector is not a panacea for the ills of post-capitalist society and post-capitalist polity, but it may be a prerequisite for tackling these ills,” Drucker wrote. “It restores the civic responsibility that is the mark of citizenship, and the civic pride that is the mark of community.”
Author
Drucker's 39 books have been translated into more than thirty languages. Two are
novelA novel is a long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s, one an
autobiographyAn autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
. He is the co-author of a book on
Japanese paintingis one of the oldest and most highly refined of the Japanese arts, encompassing a wide variety of genre and styles. As with the history of Japanese arts in general, the history Japanese painting is a long history of synthesis and competition between native Japanese aesthetics and adaptation of...
, and made eight series of
educational filmAn educational film is a film or movie whose primary purpose is to educate. Educational films have been used in classrooms as an alternative to other teaching methods.-Cultural significance:...
s on
managementManagement in all business and human organization activity is simply the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives. Management comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leading, directing, facilitating and controlling or manipulating an organization or effort for...
topics. He also penned a regular column in the
Wall Street Journal for 20 years and contributed frequently to the
Harvard Business ReviewHarvard Business Review is a general management magazine published since 1922 by Harvard Business School Publishing, owned by the Harvard Business School. A monthly research-based magazine written for business practitioners, it claims a high ranking business readership among academics, executives,...
,
The Atlantic MonthlyThe Atlantic is an American magazine founded as The Atlantic Monthly in Boston in 1857. It was created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine. Though based in Boston, it quickly achieved a national reputation, which it held for more than a century. It was important for recognizing and...
, and
The EconomistThe Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in an office in the City of Westminster, London. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843. While The Economist calls itself a...
. He continued to act as a
consultantA consultant is a professional who provides advice in a particular area of expertise such as management, accountancy, the environment, entertainment, technology, law , human resources, marketing, medicine, finance, life management, economics,...
to
businessA business is a legally recognized organization designed to provide goods and/or services to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, most being privately owned and formed to earn profit that will increase the wealth of its owners and grow the business itself...
es and
non-profit organizationA nonprofit organization is an organization that does not distribute its surplus funds to owners or shareholders, but instead uses them to help pursue its goals . Examples of NPOs include charities , trade unions, and public arts organizations...
s well into his nineties. Drucker died November 11 2005 in
Claremont, CaliforniaClaremont is a college town in eastern Los Angeles County, California, USA, about 30 miles east of downtown Los Angeles at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains. The population as of 2008 is 37,242. Claremont is known for its seven higher-education institutions, its tree-lined streets, and its...
of natural causes at 95.
Basic ideas
Several ideas run through most of Drucker's writings:
- Decentralization and simplification. Drucker discounted the command and control model and asserted that companies work best when they are decentralized. According to Drucker, corporations tend to produce too many products, hire employees they don't need (when a better solution would be outsourcing
Outsourcing is subcontracting a service, such as product design or manufacturing, to a third-party company. The decision whether to outsource or to do inhouse is often based upon achieving a lower production cost, making better use of available resources, focussing energy on the core competencies...
), and expand into economic sectors that they should avoid.
- A profound skepticism of macroeconomic theory. Drucker contended that economists of all schools fail to explain significant aspects of modern economies.
- Respect of the worker. Drucker believed that employees are assets and not liabilities. He taught that knowledge workers are the essential ingredients of the modern economy. Central to this philosophy is the view that people are an organization's most valuable resource and that a manager's job is to prepare and free people to perform.
- A belief in what he called "the sickness of government." Drucker made nonpartisan claims that government is often unable or unwilling to provide new services that people need or want, though he believed that this condition is not inherent to the form of government. The chapter "The Sickness of Government" in his book The Age of Discontinuity formed the basis of the New Public Management
New Public Management is a management philosophy used by governments since the 1980s to modernise the public sector. New Public management is a broad and very complex term used to describe the wave of public sector reforms throughout the world since the 1980s...
, a theory of public administration that dominated the discipline in the 1980s and 1990s.
- The need for "planned abandonment". Businesses and governments have a natural human tendency to cling to "yesterday's successes" rather than seeing when they are no longer useful.
- A belief that taking action without thinking is the cause of every failure.
- The need for community
Sense of community is a concept in Community psychology and social psychology, as well as in several other research disciplines, such as urban sociology, which focuses on the experience of community rather than its structure, formation, setting, or other features...
. Early in his career, Drucker predicted the "end of economic man" and advocated the creation of a "plant community" where individuals' social needs could be met. He later acknowledged that the plant community never materialized, and by the 1980s, suggested that volunteering in the nonprofit sector was the key to fostering a healthy society where people found a sense of belonging and civic pride.
- The need to manage business by balancing a variety of needs and goals, rather than subordinating an institution to a single value. This concept of management by objectives
Management by Objectives is a process of agreeing upon objectives within an organization so that management and employees agree to the objectives and understand what they are in the organization....
forms the keynote of his 1954 landmark The Practice of Management.
- A company's primary responsibility is to serve its customers. Profit is not the primary goal, but rather an essential condition for the company's continued existence.
- An organization should have a proper way of executing all its business processes.
- A belief in the notion that great companies could stand among humankind's noblest inventions.
Awards and honors
Drucker was awarded the
Presidential Medal of FreedomThe Presidential Medal of Freedom is a decoration bestowed by the President of the United States and is, along with theequivalent Congressional Gold Medal bestowed by an act of U.S. Congress, the highest civilian award in the U.S...
by U.S. President
George W. BushGeorge Walker Bush was the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009 and the 46th Governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000....
on July 9, 2002
http://www.peter-drucker.com/about.html. He also received honors from the governments of Japan and Austria. He was the Honorary Chairman of the
Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, now the
Leader to Leader Institute, from 1990 through 2002. In 1969 he was awarded
New York UniversityNew York University is a private, nonsectarian, research university in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
’s highest honor, the NYU Presidential Citation.
Harvard Business ReviewHarvard Business Review is a general management magazine published since 1922 by Harvard Business School Publishing, owned by the Harvard Business School. A monthly research-based magazine written for business practitioners, it claims a high ranking business readership among academics, executives,...
honored Drucker in the spring of 2005 with his seventh McKinsey Award for his article, "What Makes an Effective Executive", the most awarded to one person. Drucker was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1996. Additionally he holds 25 honorary doctorates from American, Belgian, Czech, English, Spanish and Swiss Universities.
Criticism
The Wall Street Journal researched several of his lectures in 1987 and reported that he was sometimes loose with the facts. Drucker was off the mark, for example, when he told an audience that English was the official language for all employees at Japan’s Mitsui trading company. (Drucker’s defense: “I use anecdotes to make a point, not to write history.”) And while he was known for his prescience, he wasn’t always correct in his forecasts. He anticipated, for instance, that the nation’s financial center would shift from New York to Washington.
Others maintain that one of Drucker’s core concepts—“
management by objectivesManagement by Objectives is a process of agreeing upon objectives within an organization so that management and employees agree to the objectives and understand what they are in the organization....
”—is flawed and has never really been proven to work effectively. Specifically, critics say that the system is difficult to implement, and that companies often wind up overemphasizing control, as opposed to fostering creativity, to meet their goals.
List of publications
- Friedrich Julius Stahl: konservative Staatslehre und geschichtliche Entwicklung (1932)
- The End of Economic Man: The Origins of Totalitarianism (1939) Google Booksearch Preview
- The Future of Industrial Man (1942)
- Concept of the Corporation
Concept of the Corporation is a book by management guru Peter Drucker published in 1946. It is widely held to be the first book of its kind.The book studies and analyses General Motors as a large social institution involved in business activities...
(1945) (A study of General Motors)
- The New Society (1950)
- The Practice of Management (1954)
- America's Next 20 Years (1957)
- Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959)
- Power and Democracy in America (1961)
- Managing for Results: Economic Tasks and Risk-Taking Decisions (1964)
- The Effective Executive (1966)
- The Age of Discontinuity (1968)
- Technology, Management and Society (1970)
- Men, Ideas and Politics (1971)
- Management: Tasks, Responsibilities and Practices (1973)
- The Unseen Revolution: How Pension Fund Socialism Came to America (1976)
- An Introductory View of Management (1977)
- Adventures of a Bystander (1979) (Autobiography)
- Song of the Brush: Japanese Paintings from the Sanso Collection (1979)
- Managing in Turbulent Times (1980)
- Toward the Next Economics and Other Essays (1981)
- The Changing World of the Executive (1982)
- The Last of All Possible Worlds (1982)
- The Temptation to Do Good (1984)
- Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Practice and Principles (1985)
- The Discipline of Innovation, Harvard Business Review, 1985
- The Frontiers of Management (1986)
- The New Realities (1989)
- Managing the Non-Profit Organization: Practices and Principles (1990)
- Managing for the Future: The 1990s and Beyond (1992)
- The Post-Capitalist Society (1993)
- The Ecological Vision: Reflections on the American Condition (1993)
- The Theory of the Business, Harvard Business Review, September-October 1994
- Managing in a Time of Great Change (1995)
- Drucker on Asia: A Dialogue Between Peter Drucker and Isao Nakauchi (1997)
- Peter Drucker on the Profession of Management (1998)
- Management Challenges for the 21st century (1999)
- Managing Oneself, Harvard Business Review, March-April 1999
- The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker's Essential Writings on Management (2001)
- Leading in a Time of Change: What it Will Take to Lead Tomorrow (2001; with Peter Senge)
- The Effective Executive Revised (2002)
- They're Not Employees, They're People, Harvard Business Review, February 2002
- Managing in the Next Society (2002)
- A Functioning Society (2003)
- The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done (2004)
- What Makes An Effective Executive, Harvard Business Review, June 2004.
- The Effective Executive in Action (2005)
- Classic Drucker (2006)
Quotes
- "In fact, that management has a need for advanced education - as well as for systematic manager development - means only that management today has become an institution of our society."
- "The best way to predict the future is to create it."
- "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."
- "What's measured improves."
- “Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you've got.”
- “Efficiency is doing better what is already being done."
- “Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.”
- “People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.”
- “The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said.”
- “The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.”
- “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
- “When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.”
- "Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility."
- "To focus on contribution is to focus on effectiveness."
- "People in any organization are always attached to the obsolete - the things that should have worked but did not, the things that once were productive and no longer are."
- "Wherever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision."
- "Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done."
Further reading
- Tarrant, John C., Drucker: The Man Who Invented the Corporate Society (1976), ISBN 0-8436-0744-0
- Beatty, Jack, The World According to Peter Drucker (1998), ISBN 0-684-83801-X
- Flaherty, John E., Peter Drucker: Shaping the Managerial Mind (1999), ISBN 0-7879-4764-4
- Edersheim, Elizabeth, The Definitive Drucker (2007), ISBN 0-07-147233-9
- Cohen, William A., A Class with Drucker: The lost lessons of the World's greatest management teacher (2008), ISBN 978-0-8144-0919-0
External links