Peter F. Drucker on Globalization

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Management

The Problems of Success

THE BEST-KEPT SECRET IN MANAGEMENT is that the first systematic applications of management theory and management principles did not take place in business enterprise. They occurred in the public sector. The first systematic and deliberate application of management principles in the United States—undertaken with full consciousness of its being an application of management—was the reorganization of the U.S. Army by Elihu Root, Teddy Roosevelt’s secretary of war. Only a few years later, in 1908, came the first “city manager” (in Staunton, Virginia), the result of a conscious application of such then-brand-new management principles as the separation of “policy” (lodged in an elected and politically ...