The Drucker Lectures: Essential Lessons on Management, Society and Economy - Rilegato

DRUCKER

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0071700455 ISBN 13: 9780071700450

Casa editrice: McGraw Hill, 2010

Riassunto

Previously unpublished talks from the Father of Modern Management

Throughout his professional life, Peter F. Drucker inspired millions of business leaders not only through his famous writings but also through his lectures and keynotes. These speeches contained some of his most valuable insights, but had never been published in book form—until now.

The Drucker Lectures features more than 30 talks from one of management's most important figures. Drawn from the Drucker Archives at the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University, the lectures showcase Drucker's wisdom, wit, profundity, and prescience on such topics as:

• Politics and economics of the environment
• Knowledge workers and the Knowledge Society
• Computer and information literacy
• Managing nonprofit organizations
• Globalization

During his life, Drucker well understood that over the last 150 years the world had become a society of large institutions—and that they would only become larger and more powerful. He contended that unless these institutions were effectively managed and ethically led, the good health of society as a whole would be in peril. His prediction is unfolding before our eyes.

The Drucker Lectures is a timely, instructive book proving that responsible behavior and good business can, in fact, exist hand in hand.

Su questo libro

Informazioni sull?autore

Peter F. Drucker was a writer, teacher, and consultant whose twenty-nine previous books have been published in more than twenty languages. He was the founder of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management.

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The DRUCKER Lectures

ESSENTIAL LESSONS ON MANAGEMENT, SOCIETY, AND ECONOMY

By Peter F. Drucker, Rick Wartzman

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 The Drucker Institute
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-07-170045-0

Contents

Introduction
Part I 1940s
1. How Is Human Existence Possible? (1943)
2. The Myth of the State (1947)
Part II 1950s
3. The Problems of Maintaining Continuous and Full Employment (1957)
Part III 1960s
4. The First Technological Revolution and Its Lessons (1965)
5. Management in the Big Organizations (1967)
Part IV 1970s
6. Politics and Economics of the Environment (1971)
7. What We Already Know about American Education Tomorrow (1971)
8. Claremont Address (1974)
9. Structural Changes in the World Economy and Society as They Affect 
American Business (1977)
Part V 1980s
10. Managing the Increasing Complexity of Large Organizations (1981)
11. The Information-Based Organization (1987)
12. Knowledge Lecture I (1989)
13. Knowledge Lecture II ((1989)
14. Knowledge Lecture III (1989)
15. Knowledge Lecture IV (1989)
16. Knowledge Lecture V (1989)
Part VI 1990s
17. The New Priorities (1991)
18. Do You Know Where You Belong? (1992)
19. The Era of the Social Sector (1994)
20. The Knowledge Worker and the Knowledge Society (1994)
21. Reinventing Government: The Next Phase (1994)
22. Manage Yourself and Then Your Company (1996)
23. On Health Care (1996)
24. The Changing World Economy (1997)
25. Deregulation and the Japanese Economy (1998)
26. Managing Oneself (1999)
27. From Teaching to Learning (1999)
Part VII 2000s
28. On Globalization (2001)
29. Managing the Nonprofit Organization (2001)
30. The Future of the Corporation I (2003)
31. The Future of the Corporation II (2003)
32. The Future of the Corporation III (2003)
33. The Future of the Corporation IV (2003)
About Peter F. Drucker
Books by Peter F. Drucker
Index

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

How Is Human Existence Possible?1943

There has never been a century of Western history so far removed from anawareness of the tragic as that which bequeathed to us two world wars. It hastrained all of us to suppress the tragic, to shut our eyes to it, to deny itsexistence.

Not quite 200 years ago—in 1755 to be exact—the death of 15,000 menin the Lisbon earthquake was enough to bring down the structure of traditionalChristian belief in Europe. The contemporaries could not make sense of it. Theycould not reconcile this horror with the concept of an all-merciful God. Andthey could not see any answer to a catastrophe of such magnitude. Now, we dailylearn of slaughter and destruction of vastly greater numbers, of whole peoplesbeing starved or exterminated, of whole cities being leveled overnight. And itis far more difficult to explain these man-made catastrophes in terms of ournineteenth-century rationality than it was for the eighteenth century to explainthe earthquake of Lisbon in the terms of the rationality of eighteenth-centuryChristianity. Yet I do not think that those contemporary catastrophes haveshaken the optimism of these thousands of committees that are dedicated to thebelief that permanent peace and prosperity will inevitably issue from this war.Sure, they are aware of the facts and are duly outraged by them. But they refuseto see them as catastrophes.

Yet however successful the nineteenth century was in suppressing the tragic inorder to make possible human existence exclusively in time, there is one factwhich could not be suppressed, one fact that remains outside of time: death. Itis the one fact that cannot be made general but remains unique, the one factthat cannot be socialized but remains individual. The nineteenth century madeevery effort to strip death of its individual, unique, and qualitative aspect.It made death an incident in vital statistics, measurable quantitatively,predictable according to the natural laws of probability. It tried to get arounddeath by organizing away its consequences. This is the meaning of lifeinsurance, which promises to take the consequences out of death. Life insuranceis perhaps the most representative institution of nineteenth-centurymetaphysics; for its promise "to spread the risks" shows most clearly the natureof this attempt to make death an incident in human life, instead of itstermination.

It was the nineteenth century that invented Spiritualism with its attempt tocontrol life after death by mechanical means. Yet death persists. Society mightmake death taboo, might lay down the rule that it is bad manners to speak ofdeath, might substitute "hygienic" cremation for those horribly public funerals,and might call gravediggers "morticians." The learned Professor [Ernst] Haeckel[the German naturalist] might hint broadly that Darwinian biology is just aboutto make us live permanently; but he did not make good his promise. And as longas death persists, man remains with one pole of his existence outside of societyand outside of time.

As long as death persists, the optimistic concept of life, the belief thateternity can be reached through time, and that the individual can fulfillhimself in society can therefore have only one outcome: despair. There must comea point in the life of every man when he suddenly finds himself facing death.And at this point he is all alone; he is all individual. If he is lost, hisexistence becomes meaningless. [Danish philosopher and theologian Soren]Kierkegaard, who first diagnosed the phenomenon and predicted where it wouldlead to, called it the "despair at not willing to be an individual."Superficially the individual can recover from this encounter with the problem ofexistence in eternity. He may even forget it for a while. But he can neverregain his confidence in his existence in society: Basically he remains indespair.

Society must thus attempt to make it possible for man to die if it wants him tobe able to live exclusively in society. There is only one way in which societycan do that: by making individual life itself meaningless. If you are nothingbut a leaf on the tree, a cell in the body of society, then your death is notreally a death; it is only a part of the life of the whole. You can hardly eventalk of death; you better call it a process of collective regeneration. Butthen, of course, your life is not real life, either; it is just a functionalprocess within the life of the whole, devoid of any meaning except in terms ofthe whole.

Thus you can see what Kierkegaard saw clearly a hundred years ago: that theoptimism of a creed that proclaims human existence as existence in society mustlead straight to despair, and that the despair leads straight tototalitarianism. And you can also see that the essence of the totalitarian creedis not how to live, but how to die. To make death bearable, individual life hasto be made worthless and meaningless. The optimistic creed that starts out bymaking life in this world mean everything leads straight to the Naziglorification of self-immolation as the only act in which man can meaningfullyexist. Despair becomes the essence of life itself.

The nineteenth century thus reached the very point the pagan world had reachedin the age of Euripides or in that of the late Roman Empire. And like antiquity,it tried to find a way out by escaping into the purely ethical, by escaping intovirtue as the essence of human existence. Ethical Culture and that brand ofliberal Protestantism that sees in Jesus the "best man ever lived," the GoldenRule and Kant's "Categorical Imperative," the satisfaction ofservice—those and other formulations of an ethical concept of life becameas familiar in the nineteenth century as most of them had been in antiquity. Andthey failed to provide a basis for human existence as much as they had failed2,000 years ago. In its noblest adherents the ethical concept leads to a stoicresignation, which gives courage and steadfastness but does not give meaningeither to life or to death. And its futility is shown by its reliance uponsuicide as the ultimate remedy—though to the stoic, death is the end ofeverything and of all existence. Kierkegaard rightly considered this position tobe one of even greater despair than the optimistic one; he calls it "the despairat willing to be an individual."

In most cases, however, the ethical position does not lead to anything as nobleand as consistent as the Stoic philosophy. Normally it is nothing butsugarcoating on the pill of totalitarianism. Or the ethical position becomespure sentimentalism—the position of those who believe that evil can beabolished, harmony be established by the spreading of sweetness, light, andgoodwill.

And in all cases the ethical position is bound to degenerate into our purerelativism. For if virtue is to be found in man, everything that is accepted byman must be virtue. Thus a position that starts out—as did Rousseau andKant 175 years ago—to establish man-made ethical absolutes must end inJohn Dewey and in the complete denial of the possibility of an ethical position.This way, there is no escape from despair.

Is it then our conclusion that human existence cannot be an existence in tragedyand despair? If so, then the sages of the East are right who see in thedestruction of the self, in the submersion of man into the Nirvana, thenothingness, the only answer.

Nothing could be further from Kierkegaard. For Kierkegaard has an answer. Humanexistence is possible as existence not in despair, as existence not intragedy—it is possible as existence in faith. The opposite of Sin—touse the traditional term for existence purely in society—is not virtue; itis faith.

Faith is the belief that in God the impossible is possible, that in Him time andeternity are one, that both life and death are meaningful. In my favorite amongKierkegaard's books, a little volume called Fear and Trembling [publishedin 1843], Kierkegaard raises the question: What is it that distinguishesAbraham's willingness to sacrifice his son, Isaac, from ordinary murder?

If the distinction would be that Abraham never intended to go through with thesacrifice but intended all the time only to make a show of his obedience to God,then Abraham indeed would not have been a murderer, but he would have beensomething more despicable: a fraud and a cheat. If he had not loved Isaac buthad been indifferent, he would have been willing to be a murderer. But Abrahamwas a holy man, and God's command was for him an absolute command to be executedwithout reservation. And we are told that he loved Isaac more than himself. ButAbraham had faith. He believed that in God the impossible would become possible,that he could execute God's order and yet retain Isaac.

If you looked into this little volume on Fear and Trembling, you mayhave seen from the introduction of the translator that it deals symbolicallywith Kierkegaard's innermost secret, his great and tragic love. When he talks ofhimself, then he talks of Abraham. But this meaning as a symbolic autobiographyis only incidental. The true, the universal meaning is that human existence ispossible, only possible, in faith. In faith, the individual becomes theuniversal, ceases to be isolated, becomes meaningful and absolute; hence infaith there is a true ethic. And in faith existence in society becomesmeaningful too as existence in true charity.

This faith is not what today so often is called a "mysticalexperience"—something that can apparently be induced by the properbreathing exercises, by fasting, by narcotic drugs or by prolonged exposure toBach with closed eyes and closed ears. It is something that can be attained onlythrough despair, through tragedy, through long, painful, and ceaseless struggle.It is not irrational, sentimental, emotional, or spontaneous. It comes as theresult of serious thinking and learning, of rigid discipline, of completesobriety, absolute will. It is something few can attain; but all can—andshould—search for it.

This is as far as I can go. If you want to go further, if you want to know aboutthe nature of religious experience, about the way to it, about faith itself, youhave to read Kierkegaard. Even so, you may say that I have tried to lead youfurther than I know the road myself. You may reproach me for trying to makeKierkegaard accept society as real and meaningful whereas he actually repudiatedit. You may even say that I have failed in relating faith to existence insociety. All these complaints would be justified, but I would not be very muchdisturbed by them—at least not as far as the purpose of this talk isconcerned. For all I wanted to show you is the possibility that we have aphilosophy that enables men to die. Do not underestimate the strength of such aphilosophy. For in a time of great sorrow and catastrophe such as we have tolive through, it is a great thing to be able to die. But it is not enough.Kierkegaard too enables men to die; but his faith also enables them to live.

From a lecture delivered at Bennington College, where Drucker had joined thefaculty in 1942.

CHAPTER 2

The Myth of the State1947

The word myth is a very queer word. If you look it up in the dictionary,you will find it defined as "a tale, a fabrication, usually invoking thesupernatural to explain natural phenomena." This definition is literallycorrect, or at least as correct as a dictionary definition can hope to be. Youcan test it for yourself; just see how neatly it fits the "myth of the state"we're going to talk about tonight.

And yet the rhetorical emphasis on the definition and its propagandistic aim arethe exact opposite of what we today usually mean when we talk about the myth.What the standard definition conveys is that myth is a silly superstition, anold wives' tale. At best, it is tolerated as a harmless flight of fancy, as anornament, a glittering trinket for children or for the leisure hours of thetired businessman. At worst, it is condemned as the invention of unscrupulousquacks—greedy priests, power-hungry demagogues, ruthlesscapitalists—who use it to frighten the gullible, uneducated, and stupidinto submission and tribute.

Now, I am not saying that myth cannot be abused or misused—in fact, intalking about the myth of the state the main questions are precisely: What isthe proper, the right use of the myth? And what is demagogic, obscurantist,tyrannical misuse? But when we use the term myth, we are neverthelessnot talking about a superstition or an old wives' tale. We talk about somethingthat is real, rational, and true: the symbolical expression of an experiencecommon to all men.

The radical change in the connotation of the term means a radical change inbasic philosophical concepts and beliefs and, above all, in the concept of humannature. It's a shift from a philosophy that sees man as reason, with the rest ofhis being—body, emotion, experience—either as an illusion or aweakness, to a philosophical position which again attempts to see all of man,that is, to see a being.

The myth, as even the extreme eighteenth-century rationalists saw, deals withexperience. It deals with what we know, not with what we can deduce or prove.Experience is not reason; it is experience. To the Cartesian rationalist and tohis successor, the German idealist philosopher, reality, truth, and validityexisted only in reason, and reason could only be applied to what was in reasonto begin with. There was no bridge from the truth of reason to the illusions andphantasma of experience. Experience was not just nonrational; it was irrational.And the myth was worse: It was a lie.

Every myth attempts to present the nonrational experience in a form in whichreason can go to work on it. And that, to the rationalist or idealist, is, fromhis point of view, the worst crime; it is a dishonesty, which can only have thepurpose of enslaving reason.

The moment, however, we see man again as a being—as a creature that hasexistence rather than as an isolated particle of reason—the myth becomescentral. The myth symbolizing it opens experience to reason. It makes itpossible for reason to understand and to analyze our experience, to criticize,direct, and change our reaction to experience. Instead of being irrational, themyth is seen as a great rationalizer—the bridge between experience andreason.

The myth makes it possible for our reason to order experience in a rational,meaningful way—that is, it makes possible the ritual. It enables ourreason to direct and to determine our reaction to experience. By making usunderstand what it is we know from our experience, it makes possible action,which is our term for movement directed by reason, when otherwise there wouldonly have been superstition. Without the myth, we would be slaves to panic; themyth enables man to walk upright; it liberates his reason from the namelessterror of the incomprehensible outside and in.

It is because it is so real, so central, so potent, that I say, "Beware of theMyth." Because it is the basis of all ritual and of all institutions, it is all-important that it be a true myth, truly interpreted. For a false myth, or onethat is interpreted falsely, is the most vicious, the most destructive thing weknow. But you may ask, how can a myth be true or false? Isn't it an opencontradiction to apply such philosophical or ethical value terms to experience?But the myth is not just experience; it is the symbolical expression ofexperience, which means that the myth itself is already a product of ourconsciousness, of our reason, of our beliefs, the product of a decision as towhat is relevant in our experience and what our experience actually means. Andthis applies with even greater force to the interpretation of themyth—that is, to ritual and action.

You can say that any myth is a valid myth if it has stood the pragmatic test,the test of time. It could not have survived unless it expressed in a plausiblesymbol an experience common to the human species. The myth always raises theright questions, always registers the right seismic disturbances, but it doesnot by necessity give the right answers. In fact, it gives no answers at all.The answers are given by our interpretation of the myth and of the experience itexpresses; they are given, in brief, by philosophy and theology, the twodisciplines that are exclusively concerned with the analysis, interpretation,and critique of the basic myth. These answers may be right, but they may also bewrong, depending upon the principles, methods, and aims of the philosopher andtheologian.

All this, as you may now have realized, has been by way of introduction to myassignment tonight, to speak on the "Myth of the State." The people who firsttalked of the state as a myth did not understand the term to mean what I make itmean. On the contrary, by calling the state a myth they meant to say that therereally is no such thing as a state, that there are only individuals existing bythemselves, and that it is a lie and worse to pretend that there is a state.Nevertheless, the state is a true myth in the sense in which I have been usingthe term.

(Continues...)

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The DRUCKER Lectures by Peter F. Drucker. Copyright © 2010 by The Drucker Institute. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc..
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Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: McGraw Hill
• Data di pubblicazione: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0071700455
• ISBN 13: 9780071700450
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Lingua: Inglese
• Numero di pagine: 285
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile