In 1943, General Motors asked Drucker to examine its corporate structure. His book, Concept of the Corporation (1946), which came out of his study of that company, was the first full-scale study of business as a social organisation. It launched Drucker's career in management and projected decentralisation as the management structure for big businesses. Drucker claimed that he had "discovered the practice of management that was just waiting to be discovered". His message was clear. Managers were paid to take responsibility, make decisions and obtain results. They could be from a wide cross-section of personality types, but they must be intelligent and think before they acted, although they did not necessarily have to be college-educated. Above all they must bring to the job integrity or, as he sometimes termed it, morality................
He made innovation and entrepreneurship the central function of management. For many, his most memorable epigram was from his book Practice of Management (1954) where he defined the purpose of a business as being "to create a customer" to which he later added "and get paid" - Quoted from Obituary by Peter Starbuck Regards, Tracy |
