The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker's Essential Writings on Management

by Drucker, Peter F.

• ISBN13: 9780061345012
• ISBN10: 0061345016
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780061793622
• Additional ISBN(s): 9780060935740, 9780066210872
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-04-15
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications
• More Book Details

About This Book

The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker's Essential Writings on Management

Who Uses It?

Primarily, this book is used by managers, executives, and professionals who are concerned with the ways that management practices and principles affect the performance of organizations, individuals, and society. It is an invaluable resource for anyone looking to understand the basic principles and concerns of management, its problems, challenges, and opportunities.

History and Editions

Published in 2008, The Essential Drucker is a compilation of twenty-six core selections from the works of Peter F. Drucker. This book has been a cornerstone in the field of management for over a decade, providing timeless insights into the nature of management and its role in shaping modern society. The book has been updated to reflect the latest research and discussions in the field of management, making it a valuable resource for both new and experienced professionals.

Author and Other Works

Peter F. Drucker is widely regarded as the father of modern management. He analyzed economics and society for more than sixty years, leaving behind a legacy of insightful writings on management. Drucker wrote numerous books, including "The Practice of Management," "Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices," and "The Effective Executive." His work continues to influence business philosophy and practice globally.

Key Features

• Comprehensive Coverage: The book covers the basic principles and concerns of management, including detailed explanations and examples.
• Timeless Insights: Drucker's writings provide a deep understanding of management's role in society, offering practical advice for both current and future challenges.
• Invaluable Compilation: The book is a collection of essential materials from Drucker's works, making it an indispensable resource for anyone interested in management.

Detailed Information

ISBNs and Formats

Hardcover: ISBN-13: 9780061345012

eTextbook: ISBN-13: 9780061345012 (The ebook for "The Essential Drucker" is available right here on eCampus.com!)

eTextbook: ISBN-13: 9780061345012 (The ebook for "The Essential Drucker" is available right here on eCampus.com!)

Loose-leaf: Not available (Note: All books are available for rental through eCampus.com)

Rental Options: Available through eCampus.com with various rental durations

Publication Details

Publisher: Harper Business

Publication Date: August 1, 2008

Number of Pages: 368

Language: English

Item Weight: Not specified

Dimensions: Not specified

Other Editions and Formats

No other editions or formats are listed.

Related ISBNs:

9780061345012 (The ebook for "The Essential Drucker" is available right here on eCampus.com!)

9780061345016 (The ebook for "The Essential Drucker" is available right here on eCampus.com!)

Rental options are available through eCampus.com for all formats.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Origin and Purpose of The Essential Drucker	p. vii
Management
Management as Social Function and Liberal Art	p. 3
The Dimensions of Management	p. 14
The Purpose and Objectives of a Business	p. 18
What the Nonprofits Are Teaching Business	p. 39
Social Impacts and Social Problems	p. 51
Management's New Paradigms	p. 69
The Information Executives Need Today	p. 95
Management by Objectives and Self-Control	p. 112
Picking People-The Basic Rules	p. 127
The Entrepreneurial Business	p. 136
The New Venture	p. 144
Entrepreneurial Strategies	p. 161
The Individual
Effectiveness Must Be Learned	p. 191
Focus on Contribution	p. 207
Know Your Strengths and Values	p. 217
Know Your Time	p. 225
Effective Decisions	p. 241
Functioning Communications	p. 261
Leadership as Work	p. 268
Principles of Innovation	p. 272
The Second Half of Your Life	p. 280
The Educated Person	p. 287
Society
A Century of Social Transformation-Emergence of Knowledge Society	p. 299
The Coming of Entrepreneurial Society	p. 321
Citizenship through the Social Sector	p. 329
From Analysis to Perception-The New Worldview	p. 337
Afterword: The Challenge Ahead	p. 347
Index	p. 350
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

The Essential Drucker
The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker's Essential Writings on Management

Chapter One

Management as Social Function and Liberal Art

When Karl Marx was beginning work on Das Kapital in the 185Os, the phenomenon of management was unknown. So were the enterprises that managers run. The largest manufacturing company around was a Manchester cotton mill employing fewer than three hundred people and owned by Marx's friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels. And in Engels's mill—one of the most profitable businesses of its day—there were no "managers," only "charge hands" who, themselves workers, enforced discipline over a handful of fellow "proletarians."

Rarely in human history has any institution emerged as quickly as management or had as great an impact so fast. In less than 150 years, management has transformed the social and economic fabric of the world's developed countries. It has created a global economy and set new rules for countries that would participate in that economy as equals. And it has itself been transformed. Few executives are aware of the tremendous impact management has had. Indeed, a good many are like M. Jourdain, the character in Molière's Bourgeois Gentilhomme, who did not know that he spoke prose. They barely realize that they practice—or mispractice—management. As a result, they are ill prepared for the tremendous challenges that now confront them. The truly important problems managers face do not come from technology or politics; they do not originate outside of management and enterprise. They are problems caused by the very success of management itself.

To be sure, the fundamental task of management remains the same: to make people capable of joint performance through common goals, common values, the right structure, and the training and development they need to perform and to respond to change. But the very meaning of this task has changed, if only because the performance of management has converted the workforce from one composed largely of unskilled laborers to one of highly educated knowledge workers.

The Origins and Development of Management

On the threshold of World War I, a few thinkers were just becoming aware of management's existence. But few people even in the most advanced countries had anything to do with it. Now the largest single group in the labor force, more than one-third of the total, are people whom the U.S. Bureau of the Census calls "managerial and professional." Management has been the main agent of this transformation. Management explains why, for the first time in human history, we can employ large numbers of knowledgeable, skilled people in productive work. No earlier society could do this. Indeed, no earlier society could support more than a handful of such people. Until quite recently, no one knew how to put people with different skills and knowledge together to achieve common goals.

Eighteenth-century China was the envy of contemporary Western intellectuals because it supplied more jobs for educated people than all of Europe did—some twenty thousand per year. Today, the United States, with about the same population China then had, graduates nearly a million college students a year, few of whom have the slightest difficulty finding well-paid employment. Management enables us to employ them.

Knowledge, especially advanced knowledge, is always specialized. By itself it produces nothing. Yet a modern business, and not only the largest ones, may employ up to ten thousand highly knowledgeable people who represent up to sixty different knowledge areas. Engineers of all sorts, designers, marketing experts, economists, statisticians, psychologists, planners, accountants, human-resources people-all working together in a joint venture. None would be effective without the managed enterprise.

There is no point in asking which came first, the educational explosion of the last one hundred years or the management that put this knowledge to productive use. Modern management and modern enterprise could not exist without the knowledge base that developed societies have built. But equally, it is management, and management alone, that makes effective all this knowledge and these knowledgeable people. The emergence of management has converted knowledge from social ornament and luxury into the true capital of any economy.

Not many business leaders could have predicted this development back in 1870, when large enterprises were first beginning to take shape. The reason was not so much lack of foresight as lack of precedent. At that time, the only large permanent organization around was the army. Not surprisingly, therefore, its commandand-control structure became the model for the men who were putting together transcontinental railroads, steel mills, modern banks, and department stores. The command model, with a very few at the top giving orders and a great many at the bottom obeying them, remained the norm for nearly one hundred years. But it was never as static as its longevity might suggest. On the contrary, it began to change almost at once, as specialized knowledge of all sorts poured into enterprise.

The first university-trained engineer in manufacturing industry was hired by Siemens in Germany in 1867—his name was Friedrich von Hefner-Alteneck. Within five years he had built a research department. Other specialized departments followed suit. By World War I the standard functions of a manufacturer had been developed: research and engineering, manufacturing, sales, finance and accounting, and a little later, human resources (or personnel).

Even more important for its impact on enterprise—and on the world economy in general—was another management-directed development that took place at this time. That was the application of management to manual work in the form of training. The child of wartime necessity, training has propelled the transformation of the world economy in the last forty years because it allows low-wage countries to do something that traditional economic theory had said could never be done: to become efficient—and yet still low-wage—competitors almost overnight.

Adam Smith reported that it took several hundred years for a country or region to develop a tradition of labor and the expertise in manual and managerial skills needed to produce and market a given product, whether cotton textiles or violins...

The Essential Drucker
The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker's Essential Writings on Management. Copyright © by Peter Drucker. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

---

Excerpted from The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker's Essential Writings on Management by Peter F. Drucker
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.