A Functioning Society: Selections from Sixty-Five Years of Writing on Community, Society, and Polity

by Peter Drucker

#Note the number of books about Drucker ↓

My life as a knowledge worker

Drucker: a political or social ecologist ↑ ↓

“I am not a ‘theoretician’;

through my consulting practice

I am in daily touch with

the concrete opportunities and problems

of a fairly large number of institutions,

foremost among them businesses

but also hospitals, government agencies

and public-service institutions

such as museums and universities.

And I am working with such institutions

on several continents:

North America, including Canada and Mexico;

Latin America; Europe;

Japan and South East Asia.

Still, a consultant is at one remove

from the day-today practice —

that is both his strength

and his weakness.

And so my viewpoint

tends more to be that of an outsider.”

broad worldview ↑

#pdw larger ↑ ::: Books by Peter Drucker ::: Rick Warren + Drucker

Books by Bob Buford and Walter Wriston

Global Peter Drucker Forum ::: Charles Handy — Starting small fires

Post-capitalist executive ↑

Learning to Learn (ecological awareness ::: operacy)

The MEMO they don’t want you to see

Peter Drucker is best known, especially in the United States, as a writer on management, but, in fact, management was neither his first nor has it been his foremost concern.

Most of his books on management deal less with strategy and results than with the nature of the corporation as human effort and social institution.

From the time of his intellectual apprenticeship to the present, Drucker’s primary subject has been community, in which the individual has status, and society in which the individual has function.

The alternative to tyranny

The selections brought together in A Functioning Society are drawn both from his books and previously uncollected writings.



Together, they reflect the full range of Drucker’s thought and constitute an ideal introduction to his work.

What is a functioning society?

Peter Drucker: Conceptual Resources

The Über Mentor

A political / social ecologist
a different way of seeing and thinking about
the big picture
— lead to his top-of-the-food-chain reputation

about Management (a shock to the system)

 

Why Peter Drucker Distrusted Facts (HBR blog)

 

“I am not a ‘theoretician’; through my consulting practice I am in daily touch with the concrete opportunities and problems of a fairly large number of institutions, foremost among them businesses but also hospitals, government agencies and public-service institutions such as museums and universities.

And I am working with such institutions on several continents: North America, including Canada and Mexico; Latin America; Europe; Japan and South East Asia.” — PFD

 

 

List of his books

 

Large combined outline of Drucker’s books — useful for topic searching.

 

 

“High tech is living in the nineteenth century,
the pre-management world.
They believe that people pay for technology.
They have a romance with technology.
But people don't pay for technology:
they pay for what they get out of technology.” —
The Frontiers of Management

“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic”. — Peter Drucker

The shift from manual workers who do as they are being told — either by the task or by the boss — to knowledge workers who have to manage themselves ↓ profoundly challenges social structure …

“Managing Oneself (PDF) is a REVOLUTION in human affairs.” … “It also requires an almost 180-degree change in the knowledge workers’ thoughts and actions from what most of us—even of the younger generation—still take for granted as the way to think and the way to act.” …

… “Managing Oneself is based on the very opposite realities: Workers are likely to outlive organizations (and therefore, employers can’t be depended on for designing your life), and the knowledge worker has mobility.” ← in a context

These pages are attention directing tools for navigating a world moving relentlessly toward unimagined futures.

What’s the next effective action on the road ahead

It’s up to you to figure out what to harvest and calendarize
— working something out in time (1915, 1940, 1970 … 2040 … the outer limit of your concern) — nobody is going to do it for you.

It may be a step forward to actively reject something (rather than just passively ignoring) and then working out a plan for coping with what you’ve rejected.

Your future is between your ears and our future is between our collective ears — it can’t be otherwise. A site exploration starting point → The memo THEY don't want you to see

What needs doing?

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#rlaexpdotcom introduction breadcrumb trail …