Writer and management consultant, born in Vienna, Austria. He emigrated to the USA in 1937, and had a varied early career as an economist, journalist, and philosophy professor before settling into a career teaching management and social sciences at New York University (195071) and the Drucker School of Management in Claremont, CA (1971). A consultant to major corporations, he also wrote prolifically on a wide range of topics from social and political issues to business analysis. He was best known for changing the teaching and practice of management, and helping to establish management as a professional discipline through his many books, articles, films, and audio-cassettes, including The Practice of Management (1954) and Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1974). These reached a wide audience, and many of his ideas have become commonplace, such as business as the representative institution of industrial society, marketing as central to management's task, and management by objectives as superior to management by control. He was also a frequent columnist for The Wall Street Journal and wrote for other publications, including the Harvard Business Review. In 2004 appeared The Daily Drucker (2004), a compendium of 366 passages of daily advice, co-written with Joseph Maciariello. His last book, The Effective Executive in Action, is to be published early in 2006. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002.
The son of a high level civil servant in the Habsburg empire, Drucker was born in a suburb of Vienna in a small village named Kaasgraben (nowadays part of the 19th district, Döbling).His career as a business thinker took off in the 1945, when his initial writings on politics and society won him access to the internal workings of General Motors, which was one of the largest companies in the world at that time.
Drucker was interested in the growing importance of people who worked with their minds rather than their hands. 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. Executives thought they knew how to run companies, and Drucker took it upon himself to poke holes in their beliefs, lest organizations become stale.
Drucker is the author of thirty-nine books, which have been translated into more than twenty languages. His first book was written in 1939, and from 1975 to 1995 was an editorial columnist for The Wall Street Journal, and was a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review. Drucker died November 11, 2005 in Claremont, California of natural causes.
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. According to Drucker, corporations tend to produce too many products, to hire employees they don't need (the better solution is contracting out), and to expand into economic sectors that they should stay out of. 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. 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. 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.Awards and Critique
Drucker was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by U.S. President George W. 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. Works as investment banker in London, UK Works as investment advisor and correspondent for Financial News, USA Works as a private consultant to business and on government policy Teaches at Sarah Lawrence College Professor at Bennington College, Vermont Spends 18 months interviewing senior management at General Motors, which produces: The Concept of the Corporation- Assessing the weaknesses of GM - Becomes best-seller Becomes Professor of Management at New York University Graduate School of Business Publish more than 33 books published over seven decades Founds of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Non-profit Management
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