Peter F Drucker is a writer, teacher, and management consultant. Still working and writing today he was born in 1909 in Vienna, Austria, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire was still in existence. He survived World War I, then lived through the empire's break-up into small states. He witnessed the transition of Vienna from a cultural and intellectual centre with enormous wealth to the capital of a relatively tiny country.
Mr. Drucker was educated in Austria and in England. During the 1930s, first in Germany and later in England, he watched the rise of Adolf Hitler. He then went to America during the Great Depression and participated in America's transition from deliberate isolationism to superpower leadership.
He has published c. 30 books which have been translated into more than twenty languages. His books deal with subjects ranging from society, economics, and politics to Japanese painting. Two of his books are novels, one is autobiographical.
He has made four series of educational films based on his management books. He has been an editorial columnist for the Wall Street Journal and is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review and other periodicals. He is perhaps best known for his books on management.
Since 1971, he has been Clarke Professor of Social Science and Management at the Claremont Graduate School in Claremont, California. Its Graduate Management Centre was named after him in 1984.
Mr. Drucker is also a consultant specialising in strategy and policy for businesses and nonprofit organizations, and in the work and organisation of top management. He has consulted with many of the world's largest corporations as well as with small and entrepreneurial companies; with nonprofit organizations; and with agencies of the US government. He has also worked with governments such as those of Canada and Japan.
It was his book “The Practice of Management” first published in 1955 that had a particular influence on the thinking of Drs Stuart Atkins and Allan Katcher. Atkins and Katcher set out to develop a programme to maximise the performance of people at work. There are at least 4 key areas in which Peter Drucker has influenced the development of the model:
"The effective leaders I have met, worked with, and observed. . . were not afraid of strength in their associates. They gloried in it. Whether they had heard of it or not, their motto was what Andrew Carnegie wanted to have put on his tombstone: 'Here lies a man who attracted better people into his service than he was himself.'"
Peter F. Drucker
Drucker's work is not just about management or generating wealth. It is about the process by which people lead productive and useful lives and produce greater opportunities and greater resources for themselves and their fellow man.
The Practice of Management set out a new philosophy for managing people in organisations. Management, the book maintains throughout, is a discipline, or at least, is capable of becoming one. It is not just common sense. It is not just codified experience
"Management is tasks. Management is a discipline. But management is also people. Every achievement of management is the achievement of a manager. Every failure is a failure of a manager. People manage rather than ‘forces’ or ‘facts’." The vision, dedication and integrity of managers determine whether there is management or mismanagement."
"In the last analysis management is practice. It’s essence is not knowing but doing. It’s test is not logic but results. It’s only authority is performance....".
In this groundbreaking work he identified the 3 jobs of management as an integrated set of activities:
In the management of the workforce Drucker highlighted the need to motivate people by recognising that:
“The qualities of people are specific and unique. The human being unlike any other resource, has absolute control over whether he works at all”.
Effectively Drucker was the first management thinker to emphasise the human in human resources. He also recognised the relationship between the workgroup and the individual:
“The human being works in groups and he forms groups to work. And a group, no matter how formed or why, soon focuses on a task. Group relationships influence the task; the task in turn influences personal relationships within the group. At the same time the human being remains an individual. Group and individual must therefore be brought into harmony in the organisation of work.”
He promoted the concept of effective management:
…”work must always be organised in such a manner that whatever strength, initiative, responsibility and competence there is in individuals becomes a source of strength and performance for the entire group.”
The focus of development is people at work.
The 4 orientations are windows into how to understand, motivate and influence people who are different from us.
The communications module shows how to achieve effective communication with:
There is a section on team development, which links the needs for effective team working with the contributions of individuals.
Finally the model links behavioural preferences with managerial activities e.g. leading and tasks e.g. managing change.
Thus the work of Peter Drucker gave insights to Drs Atkins and Katcher on how to apply the models of behaviour and motivation to the workplace.