Peter Drucker

===Key ideas===
* [[Decentralization]] and simplification.<ref>{{cite news|last=Buchanan|first=Leigh|title=Peter Drucker from A to Z|url=http://www.inc.com/articles/2009/11/drucker.html|access-date=March 12, 2012|newspaper=Inc. magazine|date=November 19, 2009}}</ref> Drucker discounted the [[Command and control (management)|command and control]] model and asserted that companies work best when they are decentralized. According to Drucker, corporations tend to [[Overproduction|produce too many products]], hire employees they don't need (when a better solution would be [[outsourcing]]), and expand into economic sectors that they should avoid.
* The prediction of the decline and marginalization of the "[[blue collar]]" worker.<ref>{{cite news|last=Drucker|first=Peter|title=The Age of Social Transformation|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/95dec/chilearn/drucker.htm|access-date=March 12, 2012|newspaper=The Atlantic|date=November 1994}}</ref>
* The concept of what eventually came to be known as "[[outsourcing]]".<ref>{{cite news|last=Wartzman|first=Rick|title=Insourcing and Outsourcing: the Right Mix|url=http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/feb2010/ca2010024_507452.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100210044752/http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/feb2010/ca2010024_507452.htm|url-status=dead|archive-date=February 10, 2010|access-date=March 12, 2012|newspaper=Bloomberg Businessweek|date=February 5, 2010}}</ref> He used the example of "front room" and "back room" of each business: a company should be engaged in only the front room activities that are critical to supporting its [[core business]]. Back room activities should be handed over to other companies, for whom these tasks are the front room activities.
* The importance of the nonprofit sector,<ref>{{cite news|last=Drucker|first=Peter|title=What Business Can Learn from Nonprofits|url=http://hbr.org/1989/07/what-business-can-learn-from-nonprofits/ar/1|access-date=March 12, 2012|newspaper=Harvard Business Review|date=July 1989}}</ref> which he calls the third sector (the private and government sectors being the first two). Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) play crucial roles in the economies of countries around the world.
* A profound skepticism of [[macroeconomic]] theory.<ref>{{cite news|last=Drucker|first=Peter|title=Schumpeter And Keynes|url=https://www.forbes.com/2007/10/10/schumpeter-keynes-economics-biz-cz_pd_1011schumpeter.html|access-date=March 12, 2012|newspaper=Forbes|date=May 23, 1983}}</ref> Drucker contended that economists of all schools fail to explain significant aspects of modern economies.
* A lament that the sole focus of microeconomics is [[price]]. Drucker noted that microeconomics fails to show what products actually do for us,<ref>Drucker, P.F., ''Innovation and Entrepreneurship'', p. 250 (1985)</ref> thereby stimulating commercial interest in how to calculate what products actually do for us from their price.
*Economic chain costing: the idea that a competitive company needs to know the costs of its entire economic chain, not simply the costs for which it is responsible as an individual business within that chain. "What matters ... is the economic reality, the costs of the entire [production] process, regardless of who owns what."<ref>Quoted in Watson, Gregory H., [https://www.academia.edu/32677662/Peter_F_Drucker_Delivering_Value_to_Customers Peter F. Drucker: Delivering Value to Customers], ''Quality Progress'', May 2002, accessed February 23, 2021</ref>
*[[Skills management|Respect for the worker]]: Drucker believed that employees are assets, not liabilities. He taught that knowledgeable workers are the essential ingredients of the modern economy, and that a hybrid management model is the sole method of demonstrating an employee's value to the organization. Central to this philosophy is the view that people are an organization's most valuable resource, and that a manager's job is both to prepare people to perform and to give them freedom to do so.<ref>Drucker, P. F., Collins, J., Kotler, P., Kouzes, J., Rodin, J., Rangan, V. K., et al., ''The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About your Organization'', p. xix (2008)</ref>
* A belief in what he called "the sickness of government". Drucker made nonpartisan claims that government is often unable or unwilling to provide new services that people need and/or want, though he believed that this condition is not intrinsic to the form of government. The chapter "The Sickness of Government",<ref>{{cite book|last=Drucker|first=Peter|title=The Age of Discontinuity|year=1969|publisher=Harper & Row|location=New York|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1Zp7_rJ1vcMC&q=drucker+%22sickness+of+government&pg=PR12|isbn=978-1-56000-618-3}}</ref> in his book ''The Age of Discontinuity'', formed the basis of [[New Public Management]],<ref>{{cite book|last=Pollitt and Bouckaert|first=Christopher and Geert|title=Public Management Reform|year=2011|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=New York|pages=38|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=epPWAutxrFQC&q=drucker&pg=PP2|isbn=978-0-19-959508-2}}</ref> a theory of public administration that dominated the discipline in the 1980s and 1990s.
* The need for "planned [[Abandonment (legal)|abandonment]]". Businesses and governments have a [[sunk cost|natural human tendency]] to cling to "yesterday's successes" rather than seeing when they are no longer useful.<ref>{{cite book|last=Drucker|first=Peter|title=Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices|year=1974|publisher=HarperCollins|location=New York|pages=84–85|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9a5SAlaY-X4C&q=drucker%20%22planned%20abandonment%22&pg=PA84|isbn=978-0-7506-4389-4}}</ref>
* A belief that taking action without thinking is the cause of every failure.
* The [[sense of community|need for community]]. Early in his career, Drucker predicted the "end of economic man" and advocated the creation of a "plant community",<ref>{{cite book|last=Drucker|first=Peter|title=The Future of Industrial Man|year=1942|publisher=The John Day Company|location=New York|pages=205|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sqSDMzKbHpsC&q=plant+community&pg=PA3|isbn=978-1-56000-623-7}}</ref> where an individual's social needs could be met. He later acknowledged that the plant community never materialized, and by the 1980s, suggested that volunteering in the nonprofit sector was the key to fostering a healthy society where people found a sense of belonging and civic pride.<ref>{{cite book|last=Drucker|first=Peter|title=Managing the Non-Profit Organization|year=1990|publisher=HarperCollins|location=New York|page=xii|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qwAf_g_GnFgC&q=community&pg=PR12|isbn=978-0-7506-2691-0}}</ref>
* The need to manage business by balancing a variety of needs and goals, rather than subordinating an institution to a single value.<ref>Drucker, Peter F., ''The Practice of Management'', pp. 62–63, (1954)</ref><ref>Drucker, Peter F., ''Managing for the Future'', p. 299, (1992)</ref> This concept of [[management by objectives]] and self-control forms the keynote of his 1954 landmark ''The Practice of Management''.<ref>Drucker, Peter F., ''The Practice of Management'', p. 12, (1954)</ref>
* A company's primary responsibility is to [[customer service|serve its customers]]. [[Profit (accounting)|Profit]] is not the primary goal, but rather an essential condition for the company's continued existence and [[sustainability]].<ref>Drucker, Peter F., ''The Practice of Management '' (1954)</ref>
* A belief in the notion that great companies could stand among mankind's noblest inventions.<ref>Drucker, Peter F., ''The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization'', p. 54, (2008)</ref>
* "Do what you do best and outsource the rest" is a business tagline first "coined and developed"<ref>{{cite web|last1=Haus|first1=Marian|title=Best 10 Peter Drucker Quotes|url=http://pmseed.com/best-10-peter-drucker-quotes/|website=pmseed thoughts on managing project work|publisher=pmseed|access-date=April 27, 2015|date=October 9, 2011}}</ref> in the 1990s by Drucker.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Vitasek|first1=Kate|title=A New way to Outsource|journal=Forbes|date=June 1, 2010}}</ref> The slogan was used primarily to advocate outsourcing as a viable business strategy. Drucker began explaining the concept of outsourcing as early as 1989 in his Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article entitled "Sell the Mailroom."<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Drucker|first1=Peter|title=Sell the Mailroom|journal=Wall Street Journal|date=November 15, 2005|issue=Manager's Journal|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB113202230063197204|access-date=April 27, 2015|publisher=Dow Jones Company|postscript=Reprint from July 25, 1989}}</ref>