Drucker's Lost Art of Management: Peter Drucker's Timeless Vision for Building Effective Organizations
448
Drucker's Lost Art of Management: Peter Drucker's Timeless Vision for Building Effective Organizations
448eBook
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Overview
For Drucker, management was a moral force, not merely a tool at the service of the amoral market . . .
"Maciariello and Linkletter provide a very thoughtful and challenging journey in understanding Drucker's profound insights into the meaning of management as a liberal art."
—C. William Pollard, Chairman Emeritus, The ServiceMaster Company
"Linkletter and Maciariello have done a masterful job in bringing into focus the connections between Drucker's visions of management as a liberal art, of leadership dominated by integrity, high moral values, a focus on developing people, an emphasis on performance and results, and on balancing stability and continuity vs. the discontinuities created by change."
—Kenneth G. Wilson, Nobel Laureate in Physics 1982, 20-year disciple of Drucker's writings
"Maciariello and Linkletter provide a must-read for a new class of managers and academics who see beyond the bottom line."
—David W. Miller, Ph.D., Director Princeton Faith & Work Initiative and Associate Research Scholar, Princeton University, and President, The Avodah Institute
About the Book:
While corporate malfeasance was once considered the exception, the American public is increasingly viewing unethical, immoral, and even criminal business behavior as the norm. According to the authors of Drucker's Lost Art of Management, there is some truth behind this new perception. Business management has lost its bearings, and the authors look to Peter Drucker’s vision of management as a liberal art to steer business back on course.
Recognized as the world's leading Drucker scholar, Joseph Maciariello, along with fellow Drucker scholar Karen Linkletter, provides a blueprint for making corporate American management more functional and redeeming its reputation. Throughout his career, Peter Drucker made clear connections between the liberal arts and effective management, but he passed away before providing a detailed exposition of his ideas. Maciariello and Linkletter integrate their Drucker expertise in management and the liberal arts to finally define management as a liberal art and fulfill Drucker's vision.
In Drucker's Lost Art of Management, Maciariello and Linkletter examine Drucker's contention that managers must concern themselves with the foundational concepts of political science, history, economic theory, and other liberal arts, such as:
- Societal values and standards
- The use and abuse of power
- Individual character development
- Innovation and technology
- The nature of good and evil
- The role managers play in a healthy society
The authors create a new philosophy of management based on the principles leaders throughout history have relied on to be effective both individually and as custodians of civilized society and healthy economies.
Our future executives, professionals, managers, and entrepreneurs are on track to learning (and perpetuating) the idea that only the bottom line matters in business--a concept that benefits no one in the end. It's up to us to instill the ageless verities that make for good management, good society, and good business results.
A passionate call for radical change in today's management practices, Drucker's Lost Art of Management provides the ideas, concepts, and practical advice to make that change happen before it's too late.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780071767484 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | McGraw Hill LLC |
| Publication date: | 04/08/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 448 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Karen Linkletter teaches American Studies at California State University at Fullerton. The first archivist at the Drucker Institute, she has experience in the financial services industry. She holds a Ph.D. and M.B.A. from Claremont Graduate University.
Read an Excerpt
DRUCKER'S LOST ART OF MANAGEMENT
Peter Drucker's Timeless Vision for Building Effective Organizations
By Joseph A. Maciariello, KAREN E. LINKLETTER
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Copyright © 2011Joseph A. Maciariello and Karen E. LinkletterAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-07-176748-4
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1ORIGINS OF MANAGEMENT AS A LIBERAL ART IN PETER DRUCKER'S WRITINGS
The concept of management as a liberal art comes from Peter F. Drucker's writings.
Drucker stated that one of his most important contributions was that he "focused this discipline [management] on People and Power; on Values, Structure, and Constitution, and above all, on responsibilities—that is, focused the Discipline of Management on management as a truly liberal art" (Drucker, 2008, p. v). Drucker didn't define management as a liberal art very clearly, however. His earliest reference to management as a liberal art appears in 1988, when he said that "management is by itself a liberal art. It has to be. It cannot be techne [skill] alone. It cannot be concerned solely with results and performance" (Drucker, 1988, p. 5). Next, in his 1989 work The New Realities, he offered the following explanation of management as a liberal art:
Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal art—"liberal" because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge, self-knowledge, wisdom, and leadership; "art" because it is practice and application. Managers draw on all the knowledges and insights of the humanities and the social sciences—on psychology and philosophy, on economics and history, on the physical sciences and ethics. But they have to focus this knowledge on effectiveness and results—on healing a sick patient, teaching a student, building a bridge, designing and selling a "user-friendly" software program. (Drucker, 1989, p. 231)
In Drucker's view, management as a liberal art draws on a tradition of knowledge and education. This tradition is a form of self-development that is loosely defined as the liberal arts tradition. While this tradition and its history will be explored at length in the next chapter, in essence, a liberal arts education usually emphasizes broad training in the humanities, science, mathematics, and the arts. Although the end goal of studying the liberal arts has varied throughout time and across cultures, there is usually some mention of instilling values, developing character or good citizens, and nurturing broadly applicable skills, such as critical thinking and analysis. In many respects, a liberal arts education defines itself by what it is not: vocational training. Liberal arts colleges often emphasize the fact that their curriculum is aimed at answering higher moral questions of life, not preparing undergraduates for specific careers. Drucker's concept of management as a liberal art echoes this ideal: that knowledge should deliver wisdom and be guided by matters of morality. However, management as a liberal art is also about practice and application, the pragmatic use of knowledge. Management as a liberal art involves applying the wisdom and moral lessons of the liberal arts to everyday questions of work, school, and society.
By its very nature, management as a liberal art involves the synthesis of many disciplines, including theology, political science, sociology and economics, philosophy, management theory, psychology, and what Drucker termed social ecology. Following an overview of Drucker's life and work on management, we turn to an analysis of several individuals who shaped his vision of management as a liberal art. Such a discussion allows us to begin to understand how specific knowledge in the liberal arts and management can be brought to bear on matters of problem solving and human development.
DRUCKER'S MISSION: A FUNCTIONING SOCIETY OF INSTITUTIONS
The term management is all too often associated only with the private sector. Many people think of Peter Drucker as a writer on business management alone, whose sole customer was the corporate executive. In reality, Drucker's mission was much larger, encompassing questions of the nature of humankind, good and evil, and meaningful existence. This philosophical, theological, and moral component of Drucker's work is too often lost in spite of the fact that Drucker himself often noted its existence:
Management always lives, works, and practices in and for an institution, which is a human community held together by the bond that, next to the tie of family, is the most powerful human bond: the work bond. And precisely because the object of management is a human community held together by the work bond for a common purpose, management always deals with the Nature of Man, and (as all of us with any practical experience learned) with Good and Evil as well. I have learned more theology as a practicing management consultant than I did when I taught religion. (Drucker, 1988, p. 5)
Drucker believed that, because human beings are always the subject of management, the practice of management must aim to create and maintain healthy organizations in which people can find meaningful existence. Because management deals with human beings, Drucker believed that managers must also be able to address not just questions of efficiency and profitability but also larger, more philosophical questions of morality, spirituality, emotional well-being, and dignity.
Drucker's human-centered view of management derived in part from his own background. Born in Vienna in 1909, Drucker was raised in a middle-class home. His father, Adolph, was a government official and economist. His mother, Caroline, was a talented musician who studied medicine. Regular guests at the Drucker home included composers, economists, philosophers, poets, and other intellectuals.
Drucker moved to Hamburg at age 18, and he later studied international law at Frankfurt University while working as a securities analyst. In 1929, he took a position as a financial writer for the Frankfurter General-Anzeiger, where he eventually became an editor covering politics and foreign and economic news. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Drucker left for London and worked there as an economist with a bank. He landed a job as foreign correspondent for several British newspapers, emigrated to America in 1937, and launched what would become a successful writing career.
In 1939, Drucker published The End of Economic Man, in which he attempted to explain the rise of Nazi totalitarianism (as well as Stalinist Russia). Drucker argued that totalitarianism was the result of the failure of both capitalism and Marxism to deliver on their promises of economic equality. Drucker described a situation in which entire societies had placed their faith in the ideologies of capitalism and Marxism and the ability of those ideologies to provide economic equality and freedom. However, high inflation and unemployment in Western Europe after World War I revealed that neither of these "secular creeds," as Drucker refers to them, could solve the terrible problems facing Germany and other countries (Drucker, 1939, p. xix). The idea of "Economic man," the human defined by his worth through the promise of material prosperity (capitalism) or economic equality (Marxism), was no longer relevant. As a result, "in despair the masses turn to the magician who promises to make the impossible possible" (Drucker, 1939, p. 22). When rational systems fail, irrational promises begin to hold out some hope for meaningful existence. Thus, Europe embraced a new faith in dictatorship: Hitler in Germany, Stalin in Russia, and Mussolini in Italy. "Heroic Man" replaced "Economic Man"; this new "man" was characterized by "his preparedness to sacrifice himself, his self- discipline, his self-abnegation, and his 'inner equality'—all independent of his economic status" (Drucker, 1939, p. 137).
Drucker concluded that the only way to avoid irrational solutions such as totalitarianism was to create a functioning society based on freedom and equality, but
(Continues...)
Excerpted from DRUCKER'S LOST ART OF MANAGEMENT by Joseph A. Maciariello. Copyright © 2011 by Joseph A. Maciariello and Karen E. Linkletter. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc..
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