About Peter Drucker

Hailed by BusinessWeek as “the man who invented management,” Drucker directly influenced a huge number of leaders from a wide range of organizations across all sectors of society. Among the many: General Electric, IBM, Intel, Procter & Gamble, Girl Scouts of the USA, the Salvation Army, Red Cross, the United Farm Workers and several presidential administrations.

Drucker’s 39 books, along with his countless scholarly and popular articles, predicted many of the major developments of the late 20th century, including privatization and decentralization, the rise of Japan to economic world power, the decisive importance of marketing and innovation, and the emergence of the information society with its necessity of lifelong learning. In the late 1950s, Drucker coined the term “knowledge worker,” and he spent the rest of his life examining an age in which an unprecedented number of people use their brains more than their backs.

Throughout his work, Drucker called for a healthy balance—between short-term needs and long-term sustainability; between profitability and other obligations; between the specific mission of individual organizations and the common good; between freedom and responsibility.

Drucker’s first major work, The End of Economic Man, was published in 1939. After reading it, Winston Churchill described Drucker as “one of those writers to whom almost anything can be forgiven because he not only has a mind of his own, but has the gift of starting other minds along a stimulating line of thought.”

Driven by an insatiable curiosity about the world around him—and a deep desire to make that world a better place—Drucker continued to write long after most others would have put away their pens. The result was a ceaseless procession of landmarks and classics: Concept of the Corporation in 1946, The Practice of Management in 1954, The Effective Executive in 1967, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices in 1973, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in 1985, Post-Capitalist Society in 1993, Management Challenges for the 21st Century in 1999.

Drucker, who had taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Bennington College, and New York University, spent the last 30-plus years of his career on the faculty at Claremont Graduate University. In 2002, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

He died in November 2005, just shy of his 96th birthday.

Early Years

Born in a suburb of Vienna, Austria on November 19, 1909. His kindergarten teacher taught “the concept of management,” and his 4th grade religious instructor asked, “What do you want to be remembered for?” His father held gatherings in the Drucker home where intellectuals, high government officials and scientists would discuss ideas and events. Among those who attended were Sigmund Freud and Joseph Schumpeter, who later impressed upon Drucker the importance of innovation and entrepreneurship.

1920s

Moved from Austria to Germany to study admiralty law at Hamburg University before transferring to Frankfurt University. Studied law at night. Became senior editor in charge of foreign affairs and business at Frankfurt’s largest daily newspaper, theFrankfurter General-Anzeiger.

1930s

Received a Ph.D. in international law from Frankfurt University. Moved to London after two of his essays – one on Friedrich Julius Stahl, a leading German philosopher, and a second, The Jewish Question in Germany – were banned and burned by the Nazi government.

Attended a lecture by leading economist John Maynard Keynes in 1934 in Cambridge, and there had an epiphany: “I suddenly realized that Keynes and all the brilliant economic students in the room were interested in the behavior of commodities while I was interested in the behavior of people.”

Married Doris Schmitz. Moved to the United States as correspondent for several British newspapers, including the Financial Times. Began teaching economics part time at Sarah Lawrence College in New York.

Title published in the 1930s

• The End of Economic Man

1940s

Took on his first of many consulting projects for General Motors, resulting in the publication of his landmark book,Concept of the Corporation (1946). Met legendary GM Chairman Alfred Sloan, who would become in many ways the model for the effective executive. “The chief executive must be…absolutely tolerant and pay no attention to how a man does his work, let alone whether he likes a man or not,” Sloan told Drucker. “The only criteria must be performance and character.”

Became professor of philosophy and politics at Bennington College and a naturalized citizen of the United States. Served briefly as a columnist for The Wall Street Journal and regular contributor to Harper’s Magazine.

Titles published in the 1940s

• The Future of Industrial Man
• Concept of the Corporation

1950s

Joined the faculty of New York University as professor of management, where he would work for 21 years. Began his formal consulting practice and took on major assignments with Sears Roebuck and IBM. Published The Practice of Management in 1954. He described it as “the foundation of a discipline.”

Coined the term “knowledge work” in 1959, the same year that Bill Gates turned four years old and Texas Instruments applied for the first patent on an integrated circuit.

Titles published in the 1950s

• The New Society
• The Practice of Management
• America’s Next Twenty Years
• The Landmarks of Tomorrow

1960s

Continued at New York University where he received the Presidential Citation, the school’s highest honor. Published the now-classic The Effective Executive in 1966. (Forty two years later, Kalima—a project that aims to increase the number and choice of books available to readers in Arabic—would choose The Effective Executive as one of the first 100 books it would translate, along with The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John Maynard Keynes, The Aeneid by Virgil, and The Meaning of Relativity by Albert Einstein.)

Titles published in the 1960s

• Managing for Results
• The Effective Executive
• The Age of Discontinuity

1970s

Authored his magnum opus, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, which would become the playbook for generations of corporate executives, nonprofit managers and government leaders. In it, Drucker famously wrote: “There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.”

Became the Clarke Professor of Social Sciences and Management at Claremont Graduate School in California and a lecturer in Oriental Art at Pomona College. Appointed to the Board of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Began a 20-year tenure as a monthly columnist for the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal.

Titles published in the 1970s

• Technology, Management and Society
• Men, Ideas and Politics
• Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices
• The Unseen Revolution
• An Introductory View of Management
• People and Performance
• Adventures of a Bystander
• Song of the Brush: Japanese Paintings from the Sansō Collection (contributing author)

1980s

The Claremont Graduate Center of Management was named for Peter Drucker. Published eight new titles in addition to maintaining active teaching and consulting activities.

Called for, and anticipated, the dramatic increase in volunteerism and in the number of nonprofits. “Only the social sector can create what we now need, communities for citizens—and especially for the highly educated knowledge workers who increasingly dominate developed societies.”

Titles published in the 1980s

• Managing in Turbulent Times
• Toward the Next Economics and Other Essays
• The Changing World of the Executive
• The Last of All Possible Worlds (fiction)
• The Temptation to Do Good (fiction)
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship
• The Frontiers of Management
• The New Realities

1990s

Delivered the prestigious Godkin Lecture at Harvard University in 1994. The Drucker Center became the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University. The Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management (today called the Leader to Leader Institute) was established in 1990. The Drucker Archives was inaugurated in 1999. Drucker authored 10 new titles.

Titles published in the 1990s

• Managing the Nonprofit Organization
• Managing for the Future
• The Ecological Vision
• Post-Capitalist Society
• The Pension Fund Revolution
• Managing in a Time of Great Change
• The Leader of the Future
• Drucker on Asia
• Peter Drucker on the Profession of Management
• Management Challenges for the 21st Century

2000s

Taught his last course in the spring of 2002, at the age of 93. The Drucker Graduate School of Management became the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management. Gave his name to the Peter F. Drucker Academy of Beijing, a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to bringing Drucker’s values and ideas to China’s burgeoning number of entrepreneurs and managers.

Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 2002. President Bush called Drucker “the world’s foremost pioneer of management theory.”

Asked near the end of his life what he considered his most important contributions, Drucker replied:

• That I early on—almost sixty years ago—realized that management has become the constitutive organ and function of the Society of Organizations;
• That management is not “Business Management”…but the governing organ of all institutions of Modern Society;
• That I established the study of management as a discipline in its own right; and
• That I focused this discipline on People and Power; on Values, Structure and Constitution; and above all on responsibilities—that is, focused the Discipline of Management on Management as a truly liberal art.

In 2006 the Drucker Archives became the Drucker Institute, with a mission to carry forward Drucker’s life work: stimulating effective management and ethical leadership across all sectors of society.

Titles published in the the 2000s

• A Functioning Society
• Classic Drucker
• The Essential Drucker
• The Effective Executive in Action, with Joseph A. Maciariello
• The Daily Drucker, with Joseph A. Maciariello
• Managing in the Next Society
• Managing in a Time of Great Change
• Management: Revised
• The Drucker Lectures: Essential Lessons on Management, Society and Economy

The Drucker Institute staff has selected the following readings for the depth and breadth of the insights they offer.

Drucker on the individual

• “Managing Oneself”
• “My Life as a Knowledge Worker”
• “Revitalizing Oneself” (Copyright © 2008 by the Peter F. Drucker Literary Trust. Posted with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.)
• “What Makes an Effective Executive”

Drucker on organizations

• “The Discipline of Innovation”
• “The Nonprofit Drucker” (free audio download)
• “Really Reinventing Government”
• “The Theory of the Business”
• “What Business Can Learn from Nonprofits”
• Writings from The Wall Street Journal

Drucker on society

• “The Next Society,” The Economist
• “The New Demographics,” The Economist
• “The New Workforce,” The Economist
• “The Manufacturing Paradox,” The Economist
• “Will the Corporation Survive?,” The Economist
• “The Way Ahead,” The Economist

Watch Jim Collins talk about why “Peter Drucker contributed more to the triumph of freedom and free society over totalitarianism than anyone in the 20th century, including perhaps Winston Churchill.”

• “Remembering Drucker,” from The Economist
• “Drucker’s ideas stand the test of time,” from the Financial Times
• “Drucker A-Z,” from Inc. magazine
• “The Education of Peter Drucker,” by Jack Beatty, The Atlantic Monthly
• The Wall Street Journal’s tribute by Steve Forbes
• International Herald-Tribune obituary
• A collection of tributes from Marshall Goldsmith, Tom Peters, Rick Warren and others.

Peter Drucker’s 39 Books

1. The End of Economic Man (1939)
2. The Future of Industrial Man (1942)
3. Concept of the Corporation (1946)
4. The New Society (1950)
5. The Practice of Management (1954)
6. America’s Next Twenty Years (1957)
7. Landmarks of Tomorrow (1957)
8. Managing for Results (1964)
9. The Effective Executive (1966)
10. The Age of Discontinuity (1968)
11. Technology, Management and Society (1970)
12. The New Markets and Other Essays (1971)
13. Men, Ideas and Politics (1971)
14. Drucker on Management (1971)
15. Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973)
16. The Unseen Revolution (1976; reissued in 1996 under the title The Pension Fund Revolution)
17. People and Performance: The Best of Peter Drucker on Management (1977)
18. Adventures of a Bystander (1978)
19. Managing in Turbulent Times (1980)
20. Toward the Next Economics and Other Essays (1981)
21. The Changing World of the Executive (1982)
22. The Last of All Possible Worlds (1982)
23. The Temptation to Do Good (1984)
24. Innovation and Entrepreneurship (1985)
25. Frontiers of Management (1986)
26. The New Realities: in Government and Politics, in Economics and Business, in Society and World View (1989)
27. Managing the Nonprofit Organization: Principles and Practices (1990)
28. Managing for the Future (1992)
29. The Ecological Vision (1993)
30. Post-Capitalist Society (1993)
31. Managing in a Time of Great Change (1995)
32. Drucker on Asia: A Dialogue between Peter Drucker and Isao Nakauchi –1997)
33. Peter Drucker on the Profession of Management (1998)
34. Management Challenges for the 21st Century (1999)
35. The Essential Drucker (2001)
36. Managing in the Next Society (2002)
37. A Functioning Society (2002)
38. The Daily Drucker (2004, with Joseph A. Maciariello)
39. The Five Most Important Questions (2008; posthumously released)

Other Drucker Writings

Monographs

• The Justification of International Law and the Will of the State (1932)
• Friedrich Julius Stahl Conservative Political Theory & Historical Development (1933)
• The Jewish Question in Germany (1936)

Contributing Writer

• Power and Democracy in America (1961)
• Preparing Tomorrow’s Business Leaders Today (1969)
• The Rise of NEC (1991)
• Song of the Brush: Japanese Painting from the Sanso Collection (1979)

Miscellaneous

• An Introductory View of Management (1977)
• Management Cases (1977; revised edition, 2009)
• The Effective Executive In Action (2006, with Joseph A. Maciariello)
• Classic Drucker (2006; content virtually identical to Peter Drucker on the Profession of Management)
• Management: Revised (2008, posthumously released, with Joseph A. Maciariello)

1. The World According to Peter Drucker by Jack Beatty (1998).
2. Reinvent Your Enterprise by Jack Bergstrand (2008).
3. Peter Drucker: Contributions to Business Enterprise edited by Tony H. Bonaparte and John E. Flaherty (1970).
4. What I Learned from Peter Drucker by Jim Champy (2010).
5. A Class With Drucker: The Lost Lessons of the World’s Greatest Management Teacher by William A. Cohen (2007).
6. Drucker on Leadership: New Lessons from the Father of Modern Management by William A. Cohen (2010).
7. The Definitive Drucker by Elizabeth Haas Edersheim (2006).
8. Peter Drucker: Shaping the Managerial Mind—How the World’s Foremost Management Thinker Crafted the Essentials of Business Success by John E. Flaherty (2002).
9. Peter Drucker: The Great Pioneer of Management Theory and Practice by Robert Heller (2000).
10. Inside Drucker’s Brain by Jeffrey A. Krames (2008).
11. The Drucker Difference: What the World’s Greatest Management Thinker Means to Today’s Business Leaders edited by Craig L. Pearce, Joseph A. Maciariello, and Hideki Yamawaki (2009).
12. Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life by Bruce Rosenstein (2009).
13. Managing People and Organizations: Peter Drucker’s Legacy by Guido Stein (2010).
14. The Strategic Drucker: Growth Strategies and Marketing Insights from the Works of Peter Drucker by Robert W. Swaim (2009).
15. Drucker: The Man Who Invented the Corporate Society by John J. Tarrant (1976).
16. Drucker on carving success out of the crisis: What Peter Drucker would have told us by Jorge Vasconcellos e Sá e Magda Pereira (2009).
17. Peter F. Drucker’s Next Management: New Institutions, New Theories and Practices edited by Winfried W. Weber and Gladius Kulothungan (2010).
18. Peter F. Drucker: Critical Evaluations in Business and Management by John C. Wood and Michael C. Wood (2005).