Management Challenges for the 21st Century

Peter F. Drucker is the éminence grise of management writing. The Harvard Business Review describes him as “the pre‐eminent management thinker of our time”. Born in 1909, he published his first book in 1939 and several generations of managers and students have been influenced by his sharp and incisive writing. Drucker has the ability to write aphorisms that are very quotable. He can describe concepts simply, so that they seem clear and obvious, and uses examples drawn from history and business practice.

His latest book considers the management challenges of the twenty‐first century, in the light of the development of management as an important business activity. In the first section that explores seven new management paradigms, Drucker recognises the limitations of Taylorist and Fayolist assumptions that there is only one optimal structure and only a single way of managing people. The centrality and pervasiveness of management in business organizations are reinforced throughout the book; “management is the specific and distinguishing organ of any and all organizations” (p. 9). Similarly there is recognition that different people should be managed differently and there are many sorts of teams and not just what he terms “jazz combos”. Drucker comments, “One does not manage people. The task is to lead people”. Other paradigms challenged concern the fixedness of technology and end users, the scope and political definition of management, and the assumption that the inside is management’s domain.

Having explored (and exploded) some management paradigms, the second section considers the nature of strategy which “converts the theory of business into performance”. Drucker postulates that there are five certainties on which strategies might be based in the twenty‐first century that are social and political, rather than economic. For example the collapsing birth‐rate and shifts in the distribution of disposable income in the developed world and increasing global competitiveness are factors that Drucker considers as certainties.

Subsequently change leaders and the nature of change are explored. Drucker remarks, “One cannot manage change. One can only be ahead of it”. He considers that the key management challenges for the future will be information and the productivity of the knowledge worker. An avuncular look is cast back over history at communication and technology and comments made that management knows how to make manufacturing workers productive, but has yet to understand how to determine and manage knowledge worker productivity.

The final chapter is devoted to managing oneself, arguably what we do least well in an age of haste and stress. Drucker explores individuality, strengths, performance, learning, values, responsibilities, all of which in macrocosm contribute to management challenges that affect organizations in general and, it is argued, the future of society.

Critical comments might be made on the use of annoying capitalization and italics, but perhaps Drucker’s tone has always been conversational rather than narrative. Peter Drucker continues, even in his 90s, to be a major management commentator whose wise words span two millennia.