Peter Drucker' wisdom

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.