Drucker Report

12-1-2005

International Business

Drucker Report

I found this online obituary for Peter Drucker that I thought did a good job summarizing his life in a few lines. Peter F. Drucker, the man who has been credited with pioneering management theory died November 11th 2005. Drucker's work, much at Claremont Graduate University in California, "turned modern management theory into a serious discipline," the university said in announcing his death. "He influenced or created nearly every facet of its application, including decentralization, privatization, empowerment, and understanding of 'the knowledge worker.''" Drucker viewed management as an art. "It deals with people, their values, their growth and development, social structure, the community and even with spiritual concerns ... the nature of humankind, good and evil."

Peter Ferdinand Drucker was born in Vienna, Austria and fled from the Nazis to the United States in 1937. In 1943, he became an official citizen of the United States and began a long and miraculous business career. He began as a teacher at New York University as Professor of Management from 1950 to 1971. From 1971 to his death he was the Clarke Professor of Social Science and Management at Claremont Graduate University.

Drucker is the author of thirty-one books, which have been translated into more than twenty languages. Two of his books are novels, and the other is an autobiography expanding on the life and travels of Peter Drucker. He is the co-author of a book on Japanese painting, and has made four series of educational films on management topics. His first book was written in 1939, and from 1975 to 1995 Drucker was an editorial columnist for The Wall Street Journal, and was a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review. He continued to act as a consultant to businesses and non-profit organizations all the way into his nineties.

Upon moving to the United States Drucker landed a part-time teaching position at Sarah Lawrence College. He joined the faculty of Bennington College in Vermont in 1942 and the next year put his academic career on hold to spend two years studying the management structure of General Motors. This experience led to his book "Concept of the Corporation," an immediate bestseller in the United States and Japan, which validated the notion that great companies could stand among humankind's noblest inventions.

During his time at the University of New York, Drucker was a professor of management at the Graduate Business School there and was awarded the Presidential Citation, the university's highest honor. Drucker moved to California in 1971, where he was instrumental in the development of the country's first executive MBA program for working professionals at Claremont Graduate University (then known as Claremont Graduate School). The university's management school was named the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management in his honor in 1987. He taught his last class at the school in the spring of 2002 while in his nineties. His courses consistently attracted the largest number of students of any class offered by the university.

Drucker had long wished to have the name of a benefactor attached to the school that bore his name. His wish was fulfilled in January of 2004, when the name of his friend, Japanese businessman Masatoshi Ito, was added to the school. It is now known as the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management. The school continues to follow Drucker's philosophy that management is a liberal art--one that takes into account not only economics, but also history, social theory, law, and the sciences. As Drucker once said, "it