Management is an organized body of knowledge. "This book," in Peter Drucker's words, "tries to equip the manager with the understanding, the thinking, the knowledge and the skills for today's and also tomorrow's jobs." This management classic has been developed and tested during more than thirty years of teaching management in universities, in executive programs and seminars and through the author's close work with managers as a consultant for large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools. Drucker discusses the tools and techniques of successful management practice that have been proven effective, and he makes them meaningful and easily accessible.

During the last fifty years, society in every developed country has become a society of institutions. Every major social task, whether economic performance or health care, education or the protection of the environment, the pursuit of new knowledge or defense, is today being entrusted to big organizations, designed for perpetuity and managed by their own managements. On the performance of these institutions, the performance of modern society--if not the survival of each individual--increasingly depends.

Only seventy-five years ago such a society would have been inconceivable. In the society of 1900 the family still served in every single country as the agent of, and organ for, most social tasks. Institutions were few and small. The society of 1900, even in the most highly institutionalized country (e.g., Imperial Germany), still resembled the Kansas prairie. There was one eminence, the central government. It loomed very large on the horizon--not because it was large but because there was nothing else around it. The rest of society was diffused in countless molecules: small workshops, small schools, the individual professional-whether doctor or lawyer-practicing by himself, the farmer, the craftsman, the neighborhood retail store, and so on. There were the beginnings of big business--but only the beginnings. And what was then considered a giant business would strike us today as very small indeed.

The octopus which so frightened the grandparents of today's Americans, Rockefeller's giant Standard Oil Trust, was split into fourteen parts by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1911. Thirty years later, on the eve of America's entry into World War II, every single one of these fourteen Standard Oil daughters had become at least four times as large as the octopus when the Supreme Court divided it--in employment, in capital, in sales, and in every other aspect. Yet, among these fourteen there were only three major oil companies--Jersey Standard, Mobil, and Standard of California. The other eleven were small to fair-sized, playing little or no role in the world economy and only a limited role in the U.S. economy.

While business has grown in these seventy years, other institutions have grown much faster. There was no university in the world before 1914 that had much more than 6,000 students--and only a handful that had more than 5,000. Today the university of 6,000 students is a pygmy; there are even some who doubt that it is viable. The hospital, similarly, has grown from a marginal institution to which the poor went to die into the center of health care and a giant in its own right--and also into one of the most complex social institutions around. Labor unions, research institutes, and many others have similarly grown to giant size and complexity.

In the early 1900s the citizens of Zurich built themselves a splendid City Hall, which they confidently believed would serve the needs of the city for all time to come. Indeed, it was bitterly attacked by conservatives as gross extravagance, if not as megalomania. Government in Switzerland has grown far less than in any other country in the world. Yet the Zurich City Hall long ago ceased to be adequate to house all the offices of the city administration. By now, these offices occupy ten times or more the space that seventy--five years ago seemed so splendid-if not extravagant.

The Employee Society

The citizen of today in every developed country is typically an employee. He works for one of the institutions. He looks to them for his livelihood. He looks to them for his opportunities. He looks to them for access to status and function in society, as well as for personal fulfillment and achievement.

Peter F. Drucker was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1909. Educated in Austria and in England, Mr. Drucker holds a doctorate in Public and International Law from Frankfurt University in Germany. He also has received honorary doctorates from American, Belgian, Czech, English, Japanese, Spanish and Swiss universities. Since 1971, Mr. Drucker has been Marie Rankin Clarke Professor of Social Science and Management at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California, which named its Graduate Management Center after him in 1987.

In addition to teaching, Mr. Drucker currently acts as a consultant, specializing in strategy and policy for both businesses and nonprofits, and in the work and organization of top management. He has worked with many of the world's largest corporations and with small and entrepreneurial companies; with nonprofits such as universities, hospitals and community services; and with agencies of the U.S. Government as well as with Free-World governments such as those of Canada and Japan. In the past, Mr. Drucker has variously been economist for an international bank in London; American economist for a group of British and European banks and investment trusts; and American correspondent for a group of British newspapers.

From 1950 to 1971, Mr. Drucker was Professor of Management at the Graduate Business School of New York University which awarded him the university s highest honor, the Presidential Citation in 1969. From 1979 to 1985, he also served as Professorial Lecturer in Oriental Art at Pomona College, one of the Claremont Colleges. He also acted as Professor of Politics and Philosophy at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont.

A prolific writer on subjects relating to society, economics, politics and management, Mr. Drucker has published 30 books which have been translated into more than twenty languages. In addition to his writings on management and economics, he has written an autobiographical book entitled, Adventures of a Bystander, and co-authored Adventures of the Brush; Japanese Paintings. Mr. Drucker has made several series of educational movies based on his management books, and he was an editorial columnist for the Wall Street Journal from 1975 to 1995, and serves as a frequent contributor to magazines.

Mr. Drucker is married and has four children and six grandchildren.