Why Did Peter Drucker Teach Management?
November 17, 2005 | By Jack Yoest
Ken Masugi, Ph.D. is the Director at the Center for Local Government at The Claremont Institute. He crossed paths with Drucker a bit. I emailed Ken wondering what the great Drucker was really like. Ken gives us his last impression of Peter Drucker:
I last saw him maybe a year and a half ago, when I took a couple of his books a friend gave me to have signed for him. He was virtually deaf but willing to undertake the annoying task...
Like Ken, I too get autographed books for friends. Your Business Blogger has run a number of book signings. And odd as it may seem, not all authors enjoy signing books. Some writers don't like being bothered. At all. But not, it seems, was Drucker.
He was a gentleman.
So why did Drucker teach management?
I went to a business school in 1949 because it was the only place where I would be allowed to teach management, which nobody had taught before. It was new, an invention. And I went to management because it was the one discipline in which I could apply all the liberal arts basically.
He found a need and filled it. But there was more to his motivation. More to his passion:
Management deals with the nature of God, the nature of man, the nature of the devil. Not necessarily in that order always.
Peter Drucker was active in leading Bible studies. He found the perfect intersection between his faith, his earthly work and eternal values.
This may well be the best lesson Peter Drucker leaves for us.
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Thank you (foot)notes:
Read the interview by Ken. It is most interesting. As you would expect. He has a blog.
Full Disclosure: Ken Masugi and I served in the James Gilmore Administration for the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Tom McMahon, a gentleman, has a review of Drucker a gentleman.
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