Peter F. Drucker was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educated there and in England. He received his doctorate in public and international law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frankfurt, Germany, and then worked as an economist for an international bank in London. In 1927, he came to the United States. Drucker's management books and analyses of economics and society are widely read and respected throughout the world and have been translated into more than 20 languages. He also has written a lively autobiography, two novels, and several volumes of essays. He has been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journals over the years and is an editorial columnist for
The Wall Street Journal.
Drucker has four children and six grandchildren. A hiker and student of Japan and Japanese art, he lives with his wife, Doris, in Claremont, California.
One of our most esteemed writers on economics and management here gathers 35 essays aimed at instructing America's industrial managers in the problemsand certainly the opportunitiesof our postindustrial society. Drucker may be difficult reading for the novice in this field, but his pieces, arranged in categories such as economics, people, management and the organization, make clear his thesis that today's economic-industrial frontiers are being manned by more-or-less faceless entrepreneurs who are emerging as managers of the big corporations that have gone through such crises as the 1973 oil crunch devised by OPEC and the ensuing inflationary storm, the virtual takeover of the car market by the Japanese, etc. American managers, he shows, have courted disaster by going for "short term" profits, whereas innovation is the ticket for the futureand for workers whose jobs are gone, the need for flexibility is urgent. Drucker shows keen insights into his themes, which range from high-tech innovations, automation, German/Japanese productivity, to the "liberal art" of management, the prophetic "visions" of IBM's Tom Watson, hostile takeovers and much more. Fortune Book Club and Executive Program main selectons; BOMC alternate.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.