Episode 3: Peter Drucker
We regret that Peter Drucker has died - however, his work is still highly influential, and for that reason the webpage and the radio programme about him have been left in their original format.
Highlights:
Peter Drucker's first great contribution was to focus on management
as a discipline in its own right.
In 'The Concept of the Corporation', Drucker explained, for the
first time, how and why decentralization worked. Drucker
said decentralization was good because it created small groups
where people felt that their contribution was important.
In'The Effective Executive' Drucker says the purpose of a
business is to create a customer and a manager's main tasks
are:
- to set objectives
- to organize
- to motivate and communicate
- to measure results
- to develop people
What Drucker wanted was a workplace where workers were trusted to
get on with the job without too much supervision, where they
knew what they needed to do and were clear about how it would be
measured and how they would be rewarded. It was management
by results rather than management by supervision.
In the 'Age of Discontinuity' Drucker focused on the changes
in society and how the role of the manager would change too. The
main changes he examined were:
- the arrival of 'knowledge industries' employing specialised workers
- the move to a global economy
- the move towards privatization.
Finally, Drucker started examining non-profit organizations
which he called the 'social sector'. These organizations, says Drucker,
are better than government in solving the social problems of competitive
capitalism.
In the next talk, Charles Handy discusses another man who puts
people first - Tom Peters.
Read Peter Drucker's
biography
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