Peter Drucker
Book

Peter Drucker

Shaping the Managerial Mind

John E. Flaherty
Jossey-Bass, 1999
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Recommendation

Peter Drucker is perhaps the most influential thinker on business and management in the world today, and John E. Flaherty explains why in this in-depth analysis of Drucker’s work and ideas. He starts with biographical details and provides a definitive account of Drucker’s achievements as a management researcher, thinker, and writer. Flaherty’s fascinating book highlights Drucker’s contributions to the fields of management and business strategy. Of necessity, the author includes summaries of Drucker’s books and quotes from his work. But, reaching a little deeper, Flaherty also shows how Drucker, who began as a social and political theorist, came to create the new academic field of management. Many of Drucker’s early ideas are still applicable today, as Flaherty makes abundantly clear in this book, which getAbstract strongly recommends to managers of all levels and students of business.

Summary

Seminal management theorist Peter Drucker is recognized as the father of modern management and as the man who invented the corporate society. He has the rare distinction of having established a modern academic discipline. His books are landmarks in the discipline of management. For the most part, Drucker’s ideas have been accepted with little criticism. In fact, many authors borrow from him freely.

Drucker came to his position as a leading management thinker via three major formative influences. Initially, he was influenced strongly by two elementary school teachers who helped him develop a short, clear writing style that enables him to convey his ideas effectively. He also was influenced by his family’s friends: the leading professional and intellectual leaders in Vienna just after World War I.

Though Drucker didn’t go to college, his curiosity and quest for learning spanned ordinary disciplines. He worked first as a trainee in a Hamburg trading house. Then he became a security analyst for a bank in Frankfurt, where he first linked his knowledge with his ability to write as a financial reporter for a leading regional newspaper. Meanwhile, he studied for a doctorate ...

About the Author

John E. Flaherty  is professor emeritus of management at Pace University in New York City, where he was formerly dean of the Graduate School of Business and chairman of the Social Science Department. After meeting Peter Drucker while auditing one of his management courses at New York University in the mid-1950s, Flaherty followed Drucker’s work over the years, keeping notes from Drucker’s lectures, books, articles, conversations and correspondence, much of which is incorporated into this book.

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