Back to the basics: Peter Drucker fifty years later.(The Practice of Management)(Book Review)

"What the business enterprise needs is a principle of management that will give full scope to individual strength and responsibility, and at the same time give common direction of vision and effort, establish team work and harmonize the goals of the individual with the common weal The only principle that can do this is management by objectives and self-control. It makes the common weal the aim of every manager."

The Practice of Management. By PETER F. DRUCKER. New York: Harper & Row, 1954. Pp. ix, 404.

This year, 2004, marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Peter Drucker's The Practice of Management. This work belongs in the category of "Great Books" because it introduced the seminal business concept of "management by objectives" and is one of the first expansive analyses of what managers do and how they should do it. While Drucker's concepts may seem obvious to today's reader, in 1954 they were considered revolutionary. Perhaps more than any other of the great books we could revisit in this series, The Practice of Management can still be read for its practical application to current challenges in public administration management.

Drucker was born in 1909 in Vienna, Austria. When The Practice of Management was published, he was professor of management in the Graduate School of Business at New York University. He had gained prominence as a business consultant, after General Motors approached him to study the company's management policies and structure. The result, The Concept of the Corporation, was published in 1945 and launched Drucker's career as a management thinker, writer and teacher. He is presently Marie Rankin Clarke Professor of Social Science and Management (Emeritus) at Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California. He is also consultant to businesses and non-profits and continues to publish books and articles on management.

When first published, reviewers noted The Practice of Management's new and revolutionary ideas. Reviewing the book in the Saturday Review, Alexander R. Heron noted, "The serious reader of The Practice of Management cannot fail to gain a concept that is nothing short of a new faith." The Business Week …