Peter Drucker: The Father Of Modern Management

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Peter Drucker: The Father of Modern Management
Non-profit organization, corporate society, management by objectives, are all terms being used and taught today and all have something in common. What is it you ask? Peter Drucker. He was the man behind all of these ideas and their growth into what they have become today. He has been titled many things including, “The Man Who Invented Corporate Society” and “the father of management principles”. The article, Drucker (2005), stated that Peter was “hailed by Business Week as “’the most enduring management thinker of our time’” (p. 1).
Peter Ferdinand Drucker was born on November 19, 1909 in Kaasgraben, a suburb of Vienna, Austria. Peter’s father, Adolf worked for the Austrian government until 1938 when Hitler invaded. After the invasion, Adolf came to the United States and became a professor of International Economics at two universities and a professor of European literature at the University of California until he dies in 1967. Caroline, Peter’s mother was one of the first women in Austria to study medicine.
As a boy, Peter attended many of the dinner parties that his parent’s threw. Since Adolf worked in the government, the typical guest list included intellectuals, government officials, and scientists. It would be common to have guests including Sigmund Freud and Joseph Schumpeter.
In 1927, Drucker graduated from gymnasium and went to work as a junior clerk in export houses. He moved to Frankfurt in 1929 and shortly thereafter received his doctorate degree in public law and international relations from the University of Frankfurt. One of Peter’s first writings, Conservative Political Theory and Historical Change was banned by the Nazi’s. Drucker move to England in 1933 afte...

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... up the corporations rather than just what results they were producing. “He sought not just to make our economy more productive but to make all of society more productive and more humane” Collins (2010) wrote. He realized long before it was popular that morality is the foundation of management. “To view other human beings as merely a means to an end, rather than as ends themselves, struck Drucker as profoundly immoral” Collins (2010) said.
Drucker taught and encouraged executives to be an authentic leader. An authentic leader “needs to be aware of, feel comfortable with, and act consistently with their values, personality, and self-concept” (pp. 354-355) according to McShane & Van Glinow (2013). Peter himself was an authentic leader. He not only practiced what he preached in terms of leadership he also suggested that the executives he was consulting do the same.

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