This book is a celebration of a sort.
Not many people can expect to see their lifetime's work entice an entire faculty into a collaborative project that builds upon that intellectual legacy.
But then, not many people are Peter Drucker nor are many faculties like the one at the School of Management in Claremont that bears the Drucker name.
To have one's work grow and develop beyond one's death is every scholar's dearest wish.
The project that this book outlines is, therefore, the sincerest compliment that could be paid to a great thinker, teacher, and wordsmith in the centenary of his birth.
But it is more than that.
It is, or should be, an inspiration and a challenge to other places of learning and teaching.
The editors of this volume of essays are too modest.
The story behind the book is indeed unique, as they say, but the editors underplay the special institutional culture that made it possible.
Could it have happened at other schools of business, one wonders, and if not, why not?
As they tell it, a meeting of the entire faculty of the Drucker School (or the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management, to give it its full title) decided spontaneously, "without prompting or provocation," to develop a course together.
Each week of the course would be taught by a different faculty member, each one demonstrating how Drucker's work was being developed in his or her own area of study.
This book provides an overview of these individual contributions to the course.
For 18 professors to work together in harmony is rare enough, but to agree to weld their individual research and teaching to another person's work is even more special.
Of course, the Drucker School is not a big school, which can make this easier, but you do not have to be big in numbers to make a big difference, in this case the Drucker Difference, as they term it.
Indeed, big institutions, in their pursuit of ever more size and supposed clout, can forget why they were created in the first place.
Graduate schools of management are unusual places.
Most graduate schools focus on one discipline, be it law or medicine or architecture.
Management schools, on the other hand, bring different disciplines to bear on one area of activity — organizations — usually leaving it to the student to make all the necessary connections between the disciplines.
The variety of disciplines makes it even harder to develop a common philosophy or direction.
Once, in my earlier career as a professor at the fledgling London Business School, a journalist rang up to ask what the school thought about a recent economic downturn.
I heard myself reply, "The school, as a school, does not have a view, although individual professors might."
I thought, as I put the phone down, that ideally the school should have a view, or at least a shared philosophy.
The Drucker School does.
It is a philosophy deeply rooted in Peter Drucker's humanistic theory of management and government — a view of organizations as if people mattered.
Peter Drucker lived so long, was so curious about so much, and covered so many topics in his writings that there is a deep well of thinking for the school to draw from.
It was once remarked of a potential British prime minister that he would be a disappointment because "he had no hinterland," meaning that he had a narrow and shallow foundation to his worldview, clever though he might be professionally.
It is a failing shared by too many leaders of business today.
No one could say that Peter Drucker had no hinterland.
Indeed, it was his broad understanding of history, art, and of all the human disciplines, not just of business, that made him so interesting to so many for so long.
Therefore, the book is, in the first place, an excellent way to understand how Drucker's ideas apply to today's dilemmas, be they the problems faced by organizations, by governments, or by individuals.
But it also serves as an example of how a management or business school can use a declared philosophy to blend together what are, at first sight, very disparate disciplines.
I have been privileged to get to know the Drucker School at close quarters and I know that it works.
Charles Handy is a social philosopher, author, and broadcaster, living in London.
He was a Visiting Scholar at the Drucker School in 2008.
Craig L. Pearce, Joseph A. Maciariello, and Hideki Yamawaki
The alternative to autonomous institutions that function and perform is not freedom.
It is totalitarian tyranny.
— Peter F. Drucker
This book provides a current snapshot of the work coming out of the laboratory that is the Peter E Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management, where faculty, students, and staff alike explore the frontiers of management together.
Peter Drucker, of course, was a member of our faculty from 1971 to 2005, and he taught courses right alongside us until he was well into his nineties.
In fact, many of us took great pleasure in sitting in on his classes.
Beyond the classroom setting, most of us had a personal relationship with him — he influenced our thinking, our culture, and our philosophy.
What was so striking about Peter was that he was so humble and so magnanimous.
He gave credit to everyone around him, and he shared his ideas and his advice freely and respectfully.
Our philosophy of management at the Drucker School is deeply rooted in Peter's professional work and in his personal character.
Our approach to organization is keenly focused on the human side of enterprise — the idea that people have value and dignity, and that the role of management is to provide a context in which people can flourish both intellectually and morally.
This is the philosophical position that binds our faculty together, it is the message that resonates with us, and it is what initially attracted us all to the Drucker School.
Today, we aspire to carry the Drucker message forward through our teaching, our writing, and our consulting, and, it almost goes without saying, through our civic engagement.
Peter's devotion to the work of social sector organizations has been an example to us all.
It was very sad for all of us when Peter passed away on November 11, 2005.
At the Drucker School, naturally, there was a sense of void.
He was, after all, the glue that had initially bound us together in our quest to improve people's lives.
Initially, we found many people, ourselves included, asking questions like, what would Peter think?
What questions would Peter ask?
Or, what would Peter do?
Of course, Peter would have discouraged such questions — he wanted us all to think for ourselves, but none of us could ignore Peter's deep commitment to management as a human activity, which is what this book is all about.
We discovered, in our journey, that Peter's philosophy permeated our worldview in such a profound way that he continues to live on through the work of all who walk in his footsteps.
One thing we all know so well about Peter is that he did not want us to simply look back at what he had done.
He wanted us to pick up the management mantle that he carried so aptly for so long and carry it forward, each on his own path.
During a Drucker School faculty meeting in the spring of 2007, a remarkable thing happened.
Spontaneously, without prompting or provocation, the entire faculty coalesced around the idea of developing a course together, in which we could build upon and honor the intellectual foundations that Peter Drucker had laid for each and every one of us.
It was to be a new course; a different course; a course that covers the various disciplines of management.
It was a course inspired by Peter Drucker, and it was meant to continue to build the Drucker living legacy within our respective fields and extend his legacy into the future through our teaching.
While the "Drucker Difference" course was conceived in the spring of 2007, it was born in September 2007.
The course is unique.
Each week, it is taught by a different faculty member.
Each class session begins with Drucker's philosophical foundations, and each faculty member then extends Drucker's foundations through his or her own work.
The course perpetuates a living Drucker legacy, and this book captures the essence of the course.
To some of us, Drucker's intellectual work can be found traced to his work on pensions; to others, it is to his work in the nonprofit sector; to others, it is to his half-century of work on knowledge work; and to still others, it is in his deep-felt concern for the importance of creating a functioning society.
Peter was prolific.
His work touched on nearly all aspects of society (including art and chaos theory, which are not included in this book), and each of us draws from the well different lessons to carry the Drucker philosophy forward.
Here we briefly review the contents of this book.
The Contributions in This Book
This book begins with "Management as a Liberal Art," by Karen Linkletter and Joseph A. Maciariello.
The authors make concrete Drucker's ideas on how management, appropriately practiced, is a liberal art.
What Drucker meant by this is that management is liberal in that it draws on the fundamentals of life, like knowledge and wisdom, and it is an art in that it requires application and wisdom to be realized.
Next, in "Drucker on Government, Business, and Civil Society," Ira Jackson does three things.
First, he introduces Peter Drucker's philosophy of government.
Second, he explores Drucker's perspective on the appropriate relationship between business and government.
Third, he examines the common challenges and differentiating characteristics of management and leadership in business, government, and civil society that Drucker was among the first to understand and to champion.
In so doing, the chapter lays a clear course for the future of such endeavors.
In the following chapter, "Leading Knowledge Workers," Craig L. Pearce examines the nature of knowledge work, the emergence of which Drucker identified nearly half-a-century ago.
Knowledge work is fundamentally different from other types of work: it requires voluntary contributions of the intellectual capital of the skilled professionals doing it.
Accordingly, Pearce claims that we need to ask ourselves what type of leadership is most appropriate in the knowledge worker context.
Therefore, this chapter discusses multiple forms of leadership and identifies how each is most appropriately deployed among knowledge workers.
Next, in "Value(s)-Based Management," James Wallace examines the juxtaposition of the creation of wealth-based values with human values.
The value-based management (VBM) approach emphasizes that the sole purpose of the corporation is to create shareholder wealth, while the corporate social responsibility (CSR) framework emphasizes broader social concerns and multiple stakeholders.
Wallace demonstrates that these two philosophies are really far more complementary than they are at odds with each other; when both are appropriately engaged, they can lead to a virtuous cycle in which doing good leads to doing well, which can provide the ability to do even more good.
As Drucker stated: "It is not enough to do well; it must also do good."
But in order to "do good," a business must first "do well."
Building on Wallace's chapter, in "Drucker on Corporate Governance," Cornelis de Kluyver expands on Drucker's views on the critical role of governance in modern enterprise.
This chapter surveys key issues in the current corporate governance debate and links them to Peter Drucker's philosophy and writings.
Then Richard Ellsworth, in "Corporate Purpose," provides perspective on the role of corporate purpose, which Drucker defined as the core concept of the corporation.
As corporate purpose is the central element of strategy — the end toward which strategy is directed — it can act as a source of organizational cohesion, strategic direction, and human motivation.
Grappling with the fundamental reasons for a firm's existence raises issues concerning the means and ends of corporate performance.
Thus, this chapter examines the profound influence that purpose, or the lack thereof, has on the corporation.
Subsequently, Vijay Sathe, in his chapter "Strategy for What Purpose?" provides a powerful framework — the POSE framework — for assessing strategy, the means through which purpose is achieved, and the success of strategy.
The POSE framework stands for purpose, objectives, strategy, and execution, and it is firmly embedded in Drucker's work on strategy and strategy implementation.
It is a useful tool for managers at all levels.
Next, Sarah Smith Orr, in her chapter "The Twenty-First Century: The Century of the Social Sector," provides a framework for building an understanding of the distinctive features of nonprofit/social-sector organizations by applying and adapting the tools originally developed by Peter Drucker.
Hideki Yamawaki, in his chapter "Economic Environment, Innovation, and Industry Dynamics," then provides a more macro view of the environmental forces acting on firms.
In line with Drucker, Yamawaki examines how a country's present business environment is shaped by its historical, political, economic, and societal conditions.
By developing a deep understanding of such issues, one is better prepared to understand the shape of the future to come for an industry, for a specific company, and for the global economy.
In the next chapter, "A Pox on Charisma," Jean Lipman-Blumen clearly identifies Drucker's deep concerns about executive leadership.
Drucker insisted that leaders must be judged by their performance and character, not by the more elusive and seductive quality of charisma.
In this chapter, Lipman-Blumen demonstrates how leaders can remain true to their own constituents, maintaining their integrity and authenticity, while connecting their vision to those of seemingly antagonistic or competitive groups with whom they must live and work together in an increasingly interdependent world.
Following, in their chapter "Knowledge Worker Productivity and the Practice of SelfManagement," Jeremy Hunter and J. Scott Scherer explain Drucker's long-established emphasis on the need to manage oneself.
They do so by exploring the notion of "mismanaging" oneself — something that is commonly experienced as stress and that has many hidden personal and organizational costs.
Accordingly, this chapter introduces basic concepts and practices of self-management.
Roberto Pedace, in his chapter "Labor Markets and Human Resources," then exposes the intersection between Peter Drucker's ideas on human resources and personnel management and the tools that economists use in addressing issues in these areas.
Although this was not the primary emphasis of Drucker's thoughts, much of his work described the importance of managerial decisions in employee recruitment, training, incentives, and compensation, and Pedace draws clear lessons for managers in this critical area of enterprise.
The decision an employee makes about motivation critically affects his or her productivity.
Jay Prag subsequently expands on Drucker's views of the economy in his chapter "Peter Drucker: The Humanist Economist."
In this chapter, Prag shows how Drucker came to understand economic activity through intense observation of human behavior — something that is often modeled away in the mathematical equations espoused by the vast majority of modern economists, which may lie at the heart of the weakness of modern economics.
In the next chapter, "The Drucker Vision and Its Foundations," Richard Smith provides a comprehensive historical review of Drucker's intellectual contributions.
He then examines how we might realize Drucker's vision in our organizations today, particularly with respect to the role of managers, the function of markets, and the importance of innovation.
Smith illustrates Drucker's deep commitment to the Austrian School of economics and to individual responsibility and freedom and the ever present dangers of losing these freedoms.
In the chapter "Drucker on Marketing," Jenny Darroch examines some of the principles of marketing and innovation that Drucker introduced many years ago.
Darroch's chapter emphasizes the need to look at the business from the customer's point of view — perhaps the most important Drucker lesson in marketing.
In addition, the chapter examines the ongoing, dynamic tension between serving existing customers and creating new customers.
Finally, Murat Binay gives an overview of the retirement systems in the United States and the rest of the world, in "A Closer Look at Pension Funds."
As Binay explains, Peter Drucker envisioned the potential significance of public and private retirement systems and made prescient observations about our pension fund systems.
This chapter explores the economic and social impact of pension funds, along with their influence on the ownership structure of US corporations.
Tying It All Together
This book provides a veritable cornucopia of ideas that extends the intellectual fruit cultivated by the master horticulturist, Peter Ferdinand Drucker.
As such, it is a living, breathing, organic document.
The people involved in this project are deeply committed to the Drucker philosophy, which emphasizes lifelong learning and continual development as knowledge workers and as human beings.
We sincerely hope that you find the contents stimulating and provocative.
Of course, while we are building on Drucker's foundations, the views expressed are solely those of the specific authors of the various chapters — we are all a work in progress.
We encourage you to join us in our quest to make a difference in our lives and work.
