Back in 1942, when Peter F. Drucker was a professor of politics and philosophy at Bennington College in Vermont, a book he had written, The Future of Industrial Man, caught the attention of some people at General Motors. They invited Drucker to study GM and Drucker agreed -- ignoring the warnings of those who said the project might derail his academic career. As Drucker said later, it was as though he had single-handedly begun an expedition to map "the dark continent of management." That exploration, which gave birth to the field of management, came to an end on November 11 when Drucker passed away at age 95.
"With the passing of Peter Drucker, the world has lost one of its intellectual giants," says Yoram (Jerry) Wind, director of the SEI Center for Advanced Studies in Management at Wharton. "Wharton and I have lost a friend, as has the field of enlightened and responsible management of both for-profit and non-profit organizations. Yet Peter's legacy and impact as a role model will last."
To honor Drucker's legacy and celebrate the ongoing relevance of his ideas and insights, Knowledge@Wharton asked several Wharton professors to sum up Drucker's most important contributions to management knowledge. Their answers are grounded in Drucker's writings on management and marketing. In Lasting Leadership: What You Can Learn from the 25 Most Influential Business People of Our Times, a book published last year, Knowledge@Wharton and Nightly Business Report named Drucker one of the 25 most influential business leaders of the past 25 years, though had the time span been 50 years he would still easily have made the list.
"There is no single contribution that I associate with Drucker that clearly stands above the corpus of his work," says [continue]
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