Tributes to Peter Drucker

by Graham Email

Link: http://www.christiansarkar.com/2005/11/best_drucker_obituary_ft.htm

Peter Drucker, the doyen of management thinkers and writers, died in November at the ripe old age of 95. He was active up until the last days of his life, constantly probing at the answers to fundamental questions of corporate leadership ans stewardship.
One of the interesting phenomena in corporate leadership is how many leaders selectively take parts of the philosophies from leaders and thinkers, while ignoring the parts that are, ahem, inconvenient. Drucker was not opposed to outsourcing as a concept; however, he was also on record as insisting that corporations must see people as resources and assets, not costs. However, it is clear that this is exactly how many corporations see their workforces these days; as costs to be managed and controlled, rather than talents and individuals to be nurtured. Of course, they don't mind shipping jobs elsewhere for short-term financial reasons. The fact that this destroys the whole idea that people are your most important asset appears to either not impinge on their thought processes (in which case they are stupid) or has impinged and they are discounting it (in which case they are stupid and they think that their workforce is stupid).
Here is a link to an excellent obituary for Peter Drucker.