This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (March 2007)

This article does not cite any references or sources. (March 2007) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

Peter Ferdinand Drucker (November 19, 1909–November 11, 2005) was a writer, management consultant and university professor. His writing focused on management-related literature. Peter Drucker made famous the term knowledge worker and is thought to have unknowingly ushered in the knowledge economy, which effectively challenges Karl Marx's world-view of the political economy.^[1] George Orwell credits Peter Drucker as one of the only writers to predict the German-Soviet Pact of 1939.^[2] Image File history File links Broom_icon. ... Image File history File links Question_book-3. ... is the 323rd day of the year (324th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1909 (MCMIX) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... is the 315th day of the year (316th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Management consulting is the process of helping companies to improve or transform themselves. ... is the 323rd day of the year (324th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1909 (MCMIX) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... is the 315th day of the year (316th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... For other uses, see Management (disambiguation). ... Knowledge worker, a term coined by Peter Drucker in 1959, is one who works primarily with information or one who develops and uses knowledge in the workplace. ... A knowledge economy is either economy of knowledge focused on the economy of the producing and management of knowledge, or a knowledge-based economy. ... Karl Heinrich Marx (May 5, 1818 – March 14, 1883) was a 19th century philosopher, political economist, and revolutionary. ... The Politics series Politics Portal This box:      Political economy was the original term for the study of production, the acts of buying and selling, and their relationships to laws, customs and government. ... Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 [1] [2] – 21 January 1950), better known by the pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist. ... Molotov (left), Ribbentrop (in black) and Stalin The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, also known as the Hitler-Stalin pact or Nazi-Soviet pact, was a non-aggression treaty between Germany and Russia, or more precisely between the Soviet Union and the Third Reich. ...

Biography

The son of a high level civil servant in the Habsburg empire -- his mother Caroline Bondi held a medical degree and his father Adolph Bertram Drucker was a lawyer, Drucker was born in Vienna, the capital of Austria, in a small village named Kaasgraben (now part of the 19th district of Vienna, Döbling). Following the defeat of Austria-Hungary in World War I, there were few opportunities for employment in Vienna so after finishing school he went to Germany, first working in banking and then in journalism. While in Germany, he earned a doctorate in international law. The rise of Nazism forced him to leave Germany in 1933. After spending four years in London,in 1937 he wed Doris Schmidt and moved permanently to the United States, where he became a university professor as well as a freelance writer and business guru. In 1943 he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He taught at New York University as a Professor of Management from 1950 to 1971. From 1971 to his death he was the Clarke Professor of Social Science and Management at Claremont Graduate University. Flag of the Habsburg Monarchy; also used as the flag of the Austrian Empire until the Ausgleich of 1867. ... For other uses, see Vienna (disambiguation). ... Döbling is the 19th district in the city of Vienna, Austria. ... Austria-Hungary, also known as the Dual monarchy (or: the k. ... “The Great War ” redirects here. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Nazism in history Nazi ideology Nazism and race Outside Germany Related subjects Lists Politics Portal         Nazism or National Socialism (German: Nationalsozialismus), refers primarily to the ideology and practices of the Nazi Party (National Socialist German Workers Party, German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP) under Adolf Hitler. ... This article is about the capital of England and the United Kingdom. ... Freelance 800F - The compact solution ABBs Freelance 800F control system combines easy engineering with an open, modern system architecture. ... Naturalization is the process whereby a person becomes a national of a nation, or a citizen of a country, other than the one of his birth. ... New York University (NYU) is a private, nonsectarian, coeducational research university in New York City. ... The social sciences are groups of academic disciplines that study the human aspects of the world. ... For other uses, see Management (disambiguation). ... {{Infobox_University |name = Claremont Graduate University |image = [[Image:]] |motto = |established = 1925 |type = Private |president = |city = Claremont |state = [[California |country = USA |grad = 2,033 |campus = Urban, 19 acres/ ha |mascot = |website= www. ...

Career

His career as a business thinker took off in 1945, when his initial writings on politics and society won him access to the internal workings of General Motors, one of the largest companies in the world at that time. His experiences in Europe had left him fascinated with the problem of authority. He shared his fascination with Donaldson Brown, the mastermind behind the administrative controls at GM. Brown invited him in to conduct what might be called a political audit. The resulting Concept of the Corporation popularized GM's multidivisional structure and led to numerous articles, consulting engagements, and additional books. General Motors Corporation (NYSE: GM), also known as GM, is an American automobile maker with worldwide operations and brands including Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, Holden, Hummer, Opel, Pontiac, Saturn, Saab and Vauxhall. ... For other uses, see Europe (disambiguation). ... Donaldson Brown (1885-1965) was a financial executive and corporate director with both DuPont and General Motors. ... Concept of the Corporation is a book by management guru Peter Drucker published in 1946. ...

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 production. 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. Mass production is the production of large amounts of standardised products on production lines. ...

Drucker is the author of thirty-nine books,^[3] which have been translated into more than twenty languages. Two of his books are novels, one an autobiography. He is the co-author of a book on Japanese painting, and made four series of educational films on management topics. His first book was written in 1939, and from 1975 to 1995 he was an editorial columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Economist. He continued to act as a consultant to businesses and non-profit organizations when he was in his nineties. Drucker died November 11, 2005 in Claremont, California of natural causes. He was 95. This article is about the literary concept. ... Cover of the first English edition of 1793 of Benjamin Franklins autobiography. ... Japanese painting ) is one of the oldest and most highly refined of the Japanese arts, encompassing a wide variety on genre and styles. ... An educational film is a film or movie whose primary purpose is to educate. ... For other uses, see Management (disambiguation). ... Look up editorial, op-ed in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is an international daily newspaper published by Dow Jones & Company in New York City, New York, USA, with Asian and European editions, and a worldwide daily circulation of more than 2 million as of 2006, with 931,000 paying online subscribers. ... December 2006 issue of the Harvard Business Review. ... The Atlantic redirects here; for the ocean, see Atlantic Ocean. ... The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd and edited in London. ... A consultant (from the Latin consultare meaning to discuss from which we also derive words such as consul and counsel) is a professional who provides expert advice in a particular area of expertise such as accountancy, the environment, technology, the law, human resources, marketing, medicine, finance, public affairs, communication, engineering... In economics, a business is a legally-recognized organizational entity existing within an economically free country designed to sell goods and/or services to consumers, usually in an effort to generate profit. ... A non-profit organization (abbreviated NPO, or non-profit or not-for-profit) is an organization whose primary objective is to support an issue or matter of private interest or public concern for non-commercial purposes, without concern for monetary profit. ... is the 315th day of the year (316th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Claremont is a city in eastern Los Angeles County, California, USA, about 30 miles (45 km) east of downtown Los Angeles at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains in the Pomona Valley. ...

Basic ideas

Several ideas run through most of Drucker's writings:

• A profound skepticism about macroeconomic theory. Drucker contended that economists of all schools fail to explain significant aspects of modern economies.
• A desire to make everything as simple as possible. According to Drucker, corporations tend to produce too many products, hire employees they don't need (when a better solution would be contracting out), and expand into economic sectors that they should stay out of.
• A belief in what he called "the sickness of government." Drucker made ostensibly non-ideological claims that government is unable or unwilling to provide new services that people need or want - though he seemed to believe that this condition is not inherent to democracy.
• The need for "planned abandonment." Corporations as well as governments have a natural human tendency to cling to "yesterday's successes" rather than seeing when they are no longer useful.
• The lasting contribution of the "father of scientific management", Frederick Winslow Taylor. Although Drucker had little experience with the analysis of blue-collar work (he spent his career analyzing managerial work), he credited Taylor with originating the seminally important idea that work can be broken down, analyzed, and improved.
• The need for community. 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 admitted that the plant community never materialized, and by the 1980s, suggested that volunteering in the non-profit sector might be the key to community.
• He wrote extensively about management by objectives.
• A company's primary responsibility is to serve its customers, to provide the goods or services which the company exists to produce. Profit is not the primary goal, but rather an essential condition for the company's continued existence. Other responsibilities, e.g., to employees and society, exist to support the company's continued ability to carry out its primary purpose.

Macroeconomics is the study of the entire economy in terms of the total amount of goods and services produced, total income earned, the level of employment of productive resources, and the general behavior of prices. ... Contracting-out is the practice of eliminating jobs at an employers existing worksite(s) and replacing them with contracts for services to be performed by non-employees, who may be individuals or corporations. ... Scientific management, also called Taylorism or the Classical Perspective, is a method in management theory that determines changes to improve labour productivity. ... Frederick Winslow Taylor Frederick Winslow Taylor (March 20, 1856 to March 21, 1915) was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. ... Sense of community (or psychological sense of community) is a concept in social psychology (or more narrowly, in community psychology), which focuses on the experience of community rather than its structure, formation, setting, or other features. ... Management by Objectives (MBO) is a process of agreeing upon objectives within an organization so that management and employees buy in to the objectives and understand what they are. ...

Awards and critique

Drucker was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by U.S. President George W. Bush on July 9, 2002[1]. He was the Honorary Chairman of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, now the Leader to Leader Institute, from 1990 through 2002. His most controversial work was on compensation schemes, in which he said that senior management should not be compensated more than twenty times the lowest paid employees. This attracted criticism from some of the same people who had previously praised him. The Presidential Medal of Freedom The Presidential Medal of Freedom is one of the two highest civilian awards in the United States and is bestowed by the President of the United States (the other award which is considered its equivalent is the Congressional Gold Medal, which is bestowed by an... George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is the forty-third and current President of the United States of America, originally inaugurated on January 20, 2001. ... is the 190th day of the year (191st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Also see: 2002 (number). ... The Leader to Leader Institute has its roots in the social sector and its predecessor, the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, which in January 2003 transferred its ongoing activities to the new identity. ...

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 (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 Painting 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 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)

Concept of the Corporation is a book by management guru Peter Drucker published in 1946. ...

Books about Peter Drucker

• Edersheim, Elizabeth, The Definitive Drucker (2007) ISBN 0-07-147233-9
• 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

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"^[4].

References

1. ^ http://needforspeak.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html
2. ^ George Orwell: Notes on Nationalism
3. ^ http://www.leadertoleader.org/knowledgecenter/thoughtleaders/drucker/index.html
4. ^ Peter F. Drucker. The Practice of Management. Page 378

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Peter Drucker

• Leader to Leader Institute
• The Drucker Institute
• The Definitive Drucker: Final Advice from the Father of Modern Management
• Thought Leaders Forum: Peter F. Drucker
• The Business World According to Peter F. Drucker
• The Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management
• Peter F. Drucker: A Biography in Progress
• Drucker Workshop (in Japanese)
• Peter F. Drucker, a Pioneer in Social and Management Theory, Is Dead at 95 (The New York Times, November 12, 2005)
• The Man Who Invented Management (BusinessWeek)
• Peter Drucker on Thinkers 50
• Peter Drucker on managementdenker.com
• Special report on Peter Drucker (The Economist, November 19, 2005)
• The icon-speaks: An interview with Peter Drucker - Interview
• Career moves for ages 20 to 70
• Peter Drucker's at it Again! What He REALLY Thinks about Libraries and Librarians
• Current Commentary on AI and Positive Change: Peter Drucker's Advice for Us on the New Ai Project: Business as an Agent of World Benefit
• More links
• WikiPractice regroups by themes extracts of Peter Drucker's books
• Full articles at Peter F. Drucker Foundation [2]
  • Managing Knowledge Means Managing Oneself by Peter F. Drucker
  • The New Pluralism by Peter F. Drucker
  • Civilizing the City by Peter F. Drucker
  • The Shape of Things to Come: An Interview with Peter F. Drucker by Peter F. Drucker

Drucker, P. F. 2006. "What Executives Should Remember". Harvard Business Review, 84(2): 144 ? 152. Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Wikiquote is one of a family of wiki-based projects run by the Wikimedia Foundation, running on MediaWiki software. ... The New York Times is a daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed internationally. ... BusinessWeek is a business magazine published by McGraw-Hill. ... The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd and edited in London. ...