Prolific Father of Modern Management
LA Times
Peter F. Drucker, the down-to-earth business thinker who defined the role of management guru, died Friday at his home in Claremont. He was 95.
During more than 60 years as an author, professor and consultant to some of America’s biggest corporations, Drucker challenged people’s thinking about organizations and popularized the notion of the postindustrial “knowledge worker.”
“Peter could look around corners,” philanthropist Eli Broad, who knew Drucker for 30 years, said Friday. “He would say things that seemed rather simple but in fact were very profound. He saw the future.”
Former General Electric Co. Chairman Jack Welch credited a pithy question from Drucker with helping him understand how to restructure the far-flung GE empire, a sometimes-wrenching process that turned the company into a stock market dynamo and made Welch one of America’s most celebrated managers.
“Drucker said: ‘If you weren’t already in this business, would you enter it today? And if not, what are you going to do about it?’ ” Welch recalled Friday night. “Simple, right? But incredibly powerful.”
Drucker’s simple question ultimately led to Welch’s operating maxim that if a GE unit could not be No. 1 or No. 2 in its field, it should be jettisoned.
Claremont Graduate University said Drucker died of natural causes. He was the Marie Rankin Clarke professor of social sciences and management at Claremont from 1971 to 2003, and he continued to write and consult from the campus until his death.
Drucker was often called the “father of modern management.” But on the occasion of his 90th birthday, he described his life work much more simply:
“I looked at people, not at machines or buildings,” he said. That approach led to nearly three dozen books and thousands of articles that formed nothing less than a guide to the 20th century economy.
