Management Challenges for the 21st
Century by Peter F. Drucker
One Of The Best Of Peter Drucker
No single person has influenced the course of business in the 20th
century as much as Peter Drucker. He practically invented management
as a discipline in the 1950s, elevating it from an ignored, even despised,
profession into a necessary institution that reflects the basic spirit of the
modern age. Now, in Management Challenges for the 21st Century,
Drucker looks at the profound social and economic changes occurring
today and considers how management--not government or free markets--
should orient itself to address these new realities. Drucker sees the
period were living in as one of PROFOUND TRANSITION--and the
changes are more radical perhaps than even those that ushered in the
Second Industrial Revolution of the middle of the 19th century, or the
structural changes triggered by the Great Depression and the Second
World War. In the midst of all this change, he contends, there are five
social and political certainties that will shape business strategy in the not-
too-distant future: the collapsing birthrate in the developed world; shifts in
distribution of disposable income; a redefinition of corporate performance;

global competitiveness; and the growing incongruence between economic
and political reality. Drucker then looks at requirements for leadership
(One cannot manage change. One can only be ahead of it), the
characteristics of the new information revolution (one should focus on the
meaning of information, not the technology that collects it), productivity of
the knowledge worker (unlike manual workers, knowledge workers must
be seen as capital assets, not costs), and finally the responsibilities that
knowledge workers must assume in managing themselves and their
careers. Druckers writing career spans eight decades and the years
have only served to sharpen his insight and perspective in a way that
makes most other management texts seem derivative. While Management
Challenges for the 21st Century is no quick airplane read, it is a wise and
thought-provoking book that will both challenge and inspire the diligent
reader. This book is for people who care about their businesses and
careers in the information age--CEOs, managers, and knowledge workers.
Highly recommended. --Harry C. Edwards
Personal Review: Management Challenges for the 21st Century
by Peter F. Drucker
"Management Challenges for the 21st Century," is the one of the last
books that Drucker wrote. The chapters are the most updated of the
Drucker books, which is no surprise given that the book was published less
than 10 years ago. The author revised his essays that appeared in his
earlier publications and books as per his observation and, I guess,
feedback theory that he preaches in the "Managing Oneself" chapter.
In the first chapter, the author sets the scope and nature of management in
the new relatively open world. He emphasizes the fact that the role of
management is not limited by either the company boundaries or the legal
boundaries of a state. In the second chapter, the author talks about 'the
future that has already happened'. One of these 'certainties' is the
demographic change in different parts of the world.
The third chapter lays our clearly that an organization must lead change
rather that just responding to change, let alone resisting change. In the
new always connected of data overload, the executives should be able to
tell information from data. They should be able to screen the data for
useful information. The executives should also be able to manage the
information flow with his superiors, peers, and subordinates.
In the fifth chapter, the authors describes how the manual worked
productivity created the foundation of developed world. The same must
happen in developing countries. But the new challenge is not in the
improvement of manual worker productivity, the tools for which have been
identified already, and have been perfectly in many cases. With the
percentage of knowledge based work increasing in the GDP of most
countries, the world, particularly the developed world needs to improve
knowledge worked productivity. This is a new challenge as the mean and
methods of increasing the knowledge worker productivity are not as clear.

Finally the author believes that the knowledge worker must take the
responsibility for his continous learning and growth. This is because of the
fact that the institutions and structures in the older corporations that took
responsibility for navigating the individuals through a predetermined career
path do not exist now or are fast disappearing. In fact it is very likely that
the worker will outlive the institutions. It is important, therefore, for the
individual to know their strenghts, their weaknesses, and the way they
produce. Some tools for getting this information is also described.
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