Tag Archives: Peter F. Drucker

Peter Ferdinand Drucker (November 19, 1909 – November 11, 2005) was a writer, management consultant, and self-described “social ecologist.”^[1] His books and scholarly and popular articles explored how humans are organized across the business, government and the nonprofit sectors of society.^[2] He is one of the best-known and most widely influential thinkers and writers on the subject of management theory and practice. His writings have predicted many of the major developments of the late twentieth century, including privatization and decentralization; the rise of Japan to economic world power; the decisive importance of marketing; and the emergence of the information society with its necessity of lifelong learning.^[3] In 1959, Drucker coined the term “knowledge worker” and later in his life considered knowledge work productivity to be the next frontier of management.

History of Peter F. Druker

Born November 19, 1909, in Vienna, Drucker was educated in Austria and England and earned a doctorate from Frankfurt University in 1931.  He became a financial reporter for Frankfurter General Anzeiger in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1929, which allowed him to immerse himself in the study of international law, history and finance.

Drucker moved to London in 1933 to escape Hitler’s Germany and took a job as a securities analyst for an insurance firm.  Four years later he married Doris Schmitz and the couple departed for the United States.

In 1939, Drucker landed a part-time teaching position at Sarah Lawrence College in New York.  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 let 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.

From 1950 to 1971, Drucker was a professor of management at the Graduate Business School of New York University.  He was awarded the Presidential Citation, the university’s highest honor.

Drucker came to California in 1971, where he was instrumental in the development of one of the country’s first executive MBA programs 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.  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.

From his early 20′s to his death, Mr. Drucker held various teaching posts, including a 20-year stint at the Stern School of Management at New York University and, since 1971, a chair at the Claremont Graduate School of Management. He also consulted widely, devoting several days a month to such work into his 90′s. His clients included G.M., General Electric and Sears, Roebuck but also the Archdiocese of New York and several Protestant churches; government agencies in the United States, Canada and Japan; universities; and entrepreneurs.

For over 50 years, at least half of the consulting work was done free for nonprofits and small businesses. As his career progressed and it became clearer that competitive pressures were keeping businesses from embracing many practices he advocated, like guaranteed wages and lifetime employment for industrial workers, he became increasingly interested in “the social sector,” as he called the nonprofit groups.

According to Claremont Graduate University, Mr. Drucker’s survivors include his wife, Doris, an inventor and physicist; his children, Audrey Drucker of Puyallup, Wash., Cecily Drucker of San Francisco, Joan Weinstein of Chicago, and Vincent Drucker of San Rafael, Calif.; and six grandchildren.

Early last year, in an interview with Forbes magazine, Mr. Drucker was asked if there was anything in his long career that he wished he had done but had not been able to do.

“Yes, quite a few things,” he said. “There are many books I could have written that are better than the ones I actually wrote. My best book would have been “Managing Ignorance,” and I’m very sorry I didn’t write it.”