Peter Drucker and Management

3Drucker and the Practice of Management

DOI: 10.4324/9781003410485-4

Introduction

Drucker states that he was likely born with an interest in organizations (Drucker, 1999). Yet, it is only by circumstances of history that he became known as the authority on modern management. His early work involved developing an explanation for the rise of the totalitarianism he witnessed in the 1930s in Europe, and a blueprint for a functioning society based on what he saw in America when he arrived there in the late 1930s (see Chapters 1 and 2). Drucker traced the rise of totalitarianism to the breakdown of traditional institutions and economic systems in Europe. The “demons” of unemployment and war broke any sense of rational order; neither capitalism, ...