Know your biz gurus

Peter Drucker: 1909- 2005

Education: Doctorate in International Law and public law from the University of Frankfurt in 1931.

 Peter Drucker has been called the world’s most influential business guru, whose thinking transformed corporate management in the latter half of the 20th century. Drucker started his career as a business strategist when he was invited to do what became a seminal two-year social-scientific analysis of General Electric. In 1950 he became professor of management in the graduate business school at New York University. Drucker taught management advice with interdisciplinary lessons from history, sociology, psychology and religion. He developed one of the country’s first executive MBA programs for working professionals at Claremont Graduate University, now known as Peter F Drucker and Masatoshi lto Graduate School of Management. Few know that the management visionary actually foretold the current financial crisis and the potential involvement of the US government with the financial companies.

Books authored: His ideas on management and leadership have been published in more than thirty books. Notable among them are:

            * The Practice of Management

            * The Concept of the Corporation

            * Managing in a Time of Great Change

            * Management Challenges for the 21st Century

Key Concepts: He advocated that business should be managed by balancing a variety of needs and goals, rather than subordinating an institution to a single value. This concept of management by objectives forms the keynote of - The Practice of Management.

In 1959, Drucker coined the term ‘knowledge worker’ and pioneered the idea of privatization. Later in his life he considered knowledge work productivity to be the next frontier of management. He believed in the empowerment of workers and the futility of big government, which he called ‘obese, muscle-bound and senile’.

CEOs who used his tactics: During his long consulting career, Drucker worked with many major corporations, including General Electric, Coca- Cola, Citicorp, IBM, and Intel. Drucker also served as a consultant for various government agencies including Salvation Army and the American Red Cross.