The Essential Drucker: Selections from the Management Works of Peter F. Drucker

The Essential Drucker, says the author in his Introduction, “is a selection from my 60 years of work and writing on management”. He goes on to say that the selection occurred in two stages. First, Arsuo Ueda, a Japanese friend and editor, produced a three‐volume selection in Japanese (after reading all Drucker’s works), from which Cass Canfield Jr, Drucker’s US editor, selected and edited texts for the present volume. Their names are worth recording here, since they are not acknowledged on the title page.

The selection consists of 26 chapters extracted and edited from ten of Drucker’s books, the earliest represented being The Practice of Management (1954) and the most recent Management Challenges for the 21st Century (1999); some of the best were excluded because they were more specialised. The chapters range from three to 28 pages in length.

It is easy to forget (or never to have known) how much the development of modern management owes to Drucker. As he says in the first chapter, management was hardly recognised before World War I, since when it “has converted knowledge from social ornament and luxury into the true capital of any economy”, expanding still further and faster since World War II, when he began to write. It is probably true to say that no serious thinker on management since has been unaffected by him (how far practitioners have been is another matter).

The 26 chapters are divided into three groups:

1. 1.

   (1) Management;

2. 2.

   (2) The individual; and

3. 3.

   (3) Society.

These three headings express Drucker’s three main concerns. He argues that management is a liberal art, being both a technology and a “humanity”, dealing as it does with people. He goes on to define the dimensions of management and its purposes and objectives – more than one might suppose, consisting of eight key areas:

1. 1.

   (1) marketing;

2. 2.

   (2) innovation;

3. 3.

   (3) human resources;

4. 4.

   (4) financial resources;

5. 5.

   (5) physical resources;

6. 6.

   (6) productivity;

7. 7.

   (7) social responsibility; and

8. 8.

   (8) profit requirements.

Some of these might seem to be in conflict; not so, says Drucker, management does and must comprise all of them. In particular, the importance of social responsibility (defined in a carefully constrained way) is quite frequently mentioned. And as in all of his writings, everything is seen in a wide historical and social context; Drucker would probably agree that people who see themselves purely as managers are very inadequate managers, for management makes no sense in isolation from the wider world. Another persistent message is the growing importance of the “knowledge worker”, whom Drucker saw long ago as the most important element in future society.

The book’s value to workers in the public sector, as most librarians are, is somewhat diminished by the fact that one of the books not used as a source is Managing the Non‐Profit Organization. Most of the 12 chapters in the “Management” section are concerned primarily with the private sector – which is not to say that lessons cannot be learned from them, for example the essay on “Picking people”. This includes a statement that ought to be displayed in every manager’s office: “If I put a person into a job and he or she does not perform, I have made a mistake. I have no business blaming that person, no business invoking the ‘Peter Principle’, no business complaining. I have made a mistake”.

In the second section, “The individual”, every chapter contains material of value. I liked especially the chapters entitled “Leadership as work” and “Principles of innovation”, both of which dampen some common beliefs, including the widespread faith in “charisma”. The chapter on “The second half of your life” relates to US society, where it is much more common to change careers (not merely jobs) in mid‐life than in Europe; this is an area where more American influence would be positively valuable to the individual and to society.

The third section, “Society”, is of much wider interest. The chapter headings indicate its scope: “A century of social transformation – emergence of knowledge society”, “The coming of entrepreneurial society”, “Citizenship through the social sector” and “From analysis to perception – the new worldview”. The need for continuous learning is stressed, as is the importance of community and volunteering and of achieving a balance between “the conceptual and the perceptual” (you will have to read the book to understand fully the last insight).

It is somewhat remarkable, and a tribute to the editors, that a book made up of extracts from ten different books hangs together quite well; the amount of repetition is very slight. It can be read straight through or randomly. It is also noteworthy that there is no perceptible change in style, and that the thinking is so consistent over time – which does not mean that Drucker’s thinking has not developed, merely that his basic principles are unaffected. It is a pity, however, that not even a little updating was undertaken. For example, Chapter 18, on “Functioning communications”, from a 1974 book, would surely be very different if e‐mail had been in use then; and Chapter 23 (1995) speculates whether the death of the “deeply ingrained” belief that “blue‐collar work … is the creator of all wealth” will spread from the USA to Europe. In the UK at least, if it had not done so by 1995, it certainly has now.

Occasional dogmatic statements irritate. I would not cite Stalin as an example of charisma; it is not true that Mao “created nothing” (whether we like what he created is another matter); and it is bluntly stated that Casals was the “greatest musical instrumentalist of this [the 20th] century”. When he pontificates about his own areas of expertise, however, my reaction is that no‐one has a better right to do so than the Pontifex Maximus of management. The same applies to his moments of immodesty: he has a lot to be immodest about.

The world of management owes a vast amount to Drucker, and it is good to see the appearance of this volume. It is not a substitute for reading his books, but it is a must‐read for all who are concerned with management in practice or theory who do not know his writings already, and a useful overview of his work for those who do. It is also, at £20, very good value for money.

The book concludes with an “Afterword: the challenge ahead”. Is this Drucker’s swansong? I hope not, though from a man in his nineties we cannot expect much more.