the essential - Família Pinto · the essential DRUCKER Selections from the Management Works of...

69

Transcript of the essential - Família Pinto · the essential DRUCKER Selections from the Management Works of...

Overdrive

t h e e s s e n t i a l

D R U C K E R

Se lec t ions f rom the Management Works o f

p e t e r f d r u c k e r

a n e x c e r p t f r o m

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THE ESSENTIAL DRUCKER Copyright copy 2001 Peter F Drucker All rights

reserved under international and Pan-American Copyright Conventions By payment

of the required fees you have been granted the non-exclusive non-transferable license

to access and read the text of this e-book on screen No part of this text may be repro-

duced transmitted down-loaded decompiled reverse engineered or stored in or

introduced into any information storage and retrieval system in any form or by any

means whether electronic or mechanical now known or hereinafter invented without

the express written permission of PerfectBoundtrade

PerfectBound tradeand the PerfectBoundtrade logo are trademarks of HarperCollins

Publishers

Print edition first published in 2001 by HarperCollins Publishers Inc

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c o n t e n t s

Introduction The Origin and Purpose of The Essential Drucker

I m a n a g e m e n t

01 Management as Social Function and Liberal Art0

I I t h e i n d i v i d u a l

13 Effectiveness Must Be Learned

I I I s o c i e t y

23 A Century of Social TransformationmdashEmergence of Knowledge Society

About the AuthorCreditsAbout PerfectBound e-Books

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The Essential Drucker is a selection from my sixty years of workand writing on management It begins with my book The

Future of Industrial Man (1942) and ends (so far at least) with my1999 book Management Challenges for the 21st Century

The Essential Drucker has two purposes First it offers I hope acoherent and fairly comprehensive Introduction to ManagementBut second it gives an Overview of my works on management andthus answers a question that my editors and I have been asked againand again Where do I start to read Drucker Which of his writingsare essential

Atsuo Ueda longtime Japanese friend first conceived TheEssential Drucker He himself has had a distinguished career inJapanese management And having reached the age of sixty herecently started a second career and became the founder and chiefexecutive officer of a new technical university in Tokyo But forthirty years Mr Ueda has also been my Japanese translator and edi-tor He has actually translated many of my books several times asthey went into new Japanese editions He is thus thoroughly famil-iar with my workmdashin fact he knows it better than I do As a result

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introduct ion the or ig in and purpose of

T H E E S S E N T I A L D R U C K E R

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he increasingly got invited to conduct Japanese conferences andseminars on my work and found himself being asked over and overagainmdashespecially by younger people both students and executivesat the start of their careersmdashWhere do I start reading Drucker

This led Mr Ueda to reread my entire work to select from itthe most pertinent chapters and to abridge them so that they readas if they had originally been written as one cohesive text Theresult was a three-volume essential Drucker of fifty-seven chap-tersmdashone volume on the management of organizations one vol-ume on the individual in the society of organizations one onsociety in generalmdashwhich was published in Japan in the summerand fall of 2000 and has met with great success It is also beingpublished in Taiwan mainland China and Korea and inArgentina Mexico and Brazil

It is Mr Uedarsquos text that is being used for the US and UKeditions of The Essential Drucker But these editions not only areless than half the size of Mr Uedarsquos original Japanese versionmdashtwenty-six chapters versus the three-volumesrsquo fifty-seven They alsohave a somewhat different focus Cass Canfield Jr at HarperCollinsin the United Statesmdashlongtime friend and my US editor for overthirty yearsmdashalso came to the conclusion a few years ago that therewas need for an introduction to and overview of my sixty years ofmanagement writings But hemdashrightlymdashsaw that the US andUK (and probably altogether the Western) audience for such awork would be both broader and narrower than the audience forthe Japanese venture It would be broader because there is in theWest a growing number of people who while not themselves exec-utives have come to see management as an area of public interestthere are also an increasing number of students in colleges and uni-versities who while not necessarily management students see anunderstanding of management as part of a general education andfinally there are a large and rapidly growing number of mid-careermanagers and professionals who are flocking to advanced-executiveprograms both in universities and in their employing organiza-tions The focus would however also be narrower because these

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additional audiences need and want less an introduction to andoverview of Druckerrsquos work than they want a concise comprehen-sive and sharply focused Introduction to Management and tomanagement alone And thus while using Mr Uedarsquos editing andabridging Cass Canfield Jr (with my full indeed my enthusiasticsupport) selected and edited the texts from the Japanese three-volumeedition into a comprehensive cohesive and self-contained intro-duction to managementmdashboth of the management of an enterpriseand of the self-management of the individual whether executive orprofessional within an enterprise and altogether in our society ofmanaged organizations

My readers as well as I owe to both Atsuo Ueda and Cass Can-field Jr an enormous debt of gratitude The two put an incredibleamount of work and dedication into The Essential Drucker And theend product is not only the best introduction to onersquos work anyauthor could possibly have asked for It is also I am convinced atruly unique cohesive and self-contained introduction to manage-ment its basic principles and concerns its problems challengesopportunities

This volume as said before is also an overview of my works onmanagement Readers may therefore want to know where to go inmy books to further pursue this or that topic or this or that area ofparticular interest to them Here therefore are the sources in mybooks for each of twenty-six chapters of the The Essential Drucker

Chapter 1 and 26 are excerpted from The New Realities (1988)Chapters 2 3 5 18 are excerpted from Management Tasks

Responsibilities Practices (1974)Chapters 4 and 19 are excerpted from Managing for the Future

(1992) and were first published in the Harvard Business Review(1989) and in the Wall Street Journal (1988) respectively

Chapters 6 15 and 21 are excerpted from Management Chal-lenges for the 21st Century (1999)

Chapters 7 and 23 are excerpted from Management in a Timeof Great Change (1995) and were first published in the Harvard

i n t r o d u c t i o n vii

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Business Review (1994) and in the Atlantic Monthly (1996) respec-tively

Chapter 8 was excerpted from The Practice of Management(1954)

Chapter 9 was excerpted from The Frontiers of Management(1986) and was first published in the Harvard Business Review(1985)

Chapters 10 11 12 20 24 were excerpted from Innovation andEntrepreneurship (1985)

Chapters 13 14 16 17 were excerpted from The Effective Exec-utive (1966)

Chapters 22 and 25 were excerpted from Post-Capitalist Society(1993)

All these books are still in print in the United States and inmany other countries

This one-volume edition of The Essential Drucker does nothowever include any excerpts from five important Managementbooks of mine The Future of Industrial Man (1942) Concept of theCorporation (1946) Managing for Results (1964 the first book onwhat is now called ldquostrategyrdquo a term unknown for business fortyyears ago) Managing in Turbulent Times (1980) Managing theNon-Profit Organization (1990) These are important books andstill widely read and used But their subject matter is more special-izedmdashand in some cases also more technicalmdashthan that of thebooks from which the chapters of the present book were chosenmdashand thus had to be left out of a work that calls itself Essential

mdashPeter F DruckerClaremont California

Spring 2001

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I

M A N A G E M E N T

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When Karl Marx was beginning work on Das Kapital in the1850s the phenomenon of management was unknown So

were the enterprises that managers run The largest manufacturingcompany around was a Manchester cotton mill employing fewerthan three hundred people and owned by Marxrsquos friend and collab-orator Friedrich Engels And in Engelsrsquos millmdashone of the mostprofitable businesses of its daymdashthere were no ldquomanagersrdquo onlyldquocharge handsrdquo who themselves workers enforced discipline over ahandful of fellow ldquoproletariansrdquo

Rarely in human history has any institution emerged as quicklyas management or had as great an impact so fast In less than 150years management has transformed the social and economic fabricof the worldrsquos developed countries It has created a global economyand set new rules for countries that would participate in that econ-omy as equals And it has itself been transformed Few executivesare aware of the tremendous impact management has had Indeed agood many are like M Jourdain the character in Moliegraverersquos Bour-geois Gentilhomme who did not know that he spoke prose Theybarely realize that they practicemdashor mispracticemdashmanagement As

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1

management a ssoc ial funct ion and

l iberal art

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4 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

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a result they are ill prepared for the tremendous challenges thatnow confront them The truly important problems managers facedo not come from technology or politics they do not originate out-side of management and enterprise They are problems caused bythe very success of management itself

To be sure the fundamental task of management remains thesame to make people capable of joint performance through com-mon goals common values the right structure and the trainingand development they need to perform and to respond to changeBut the very meaning of this task has changed if only because theperformance of management has converted the workforce from onecomposed largely of unskilled laborers to one of highly educatedknowledge workers

The Orig ins and Deve lopment of Management

On the threshold of World War I a few thinkers were just becom-ing aware of managementrsquos existence But few people even in themost advanced countries had anything to do with it Now the largestsingle group in the labor force more than one-third of the total arepeople whom the US Bureau of the Census calls ldquomanagerial andprofessionalrdquo Management has been the main agent of this trans-formation Management explains why for the first time in humanhistory we can employ large numbers of knowledgeable skilledpeople in productive work No earlier society could do thisIndeed no earlier society could support more than a handful ofsuch people Until quite recently no one knew how to put peoplewith different skills and knowledge together to achieve commongoals

Eighteenth-century China was the envy of contemporary West-ern intellectuals because it supplied more jobs for educated peoplethan all of Europe didmdashsome twenty thousand per year Today theUnited States with about the same population China then hadgraduates nearly a million college students a year few of whom have

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m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 5

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the slightest difficulty finding well-paid employment Managementenables us to employ them

Knowledge especially advanced knowledge is always special-ized By itself it produces nothing Yet a modern business and notonly the largest ones may employ up to ten thousand highly knowl-edgeable people who represent up to sixty different knowledge areasEngineers of all sorts designers marketing experts economistsstatisticians psychologists planners accountants human-resourcespeoplemdashall working together in a joint venture None would beeffective without the managed enterprise

There is no point in asking which came first the educationalexplosion of the last one hundred years or the management that putthis knowledge to productive use Modern management and mod-ern enterprise could not exist without the knowledge base thatdeveloped societies have built But equally it is management andmanagement alone that makes effective all this knowledge andthese knowledgeable people The emergence of management hasconverted knowledge from social ornament and luxury into the truecapital of any economy

Not many business leaders could have predicted this develop-ment back in 1870 when large enterprises were first beginning totake shape The reason was not so much lack of foresight as lack ofprecedent At that time the only large permanent organizationaround was the army Not surprisingly therefore its command-and-control structure became the model for the men who wereputting together transcontinental railroads steel mills modernbanks and department stores The command model with a veryfew at the top giving orders and a great many at the bottom obeyingthem remained the norm for nearly one hundred years But it wasnever as static as its longevity might suggest On the contrary itbegan to change almost at once as specialized knowledge of all sortspoured into enterprise

The first university-trained engineer in manufacturing industrywas hired by Siemens in Germany in 1867mdashhis name wasFriedrich von Hefner-Alteneck Within five years he had built a

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-1__0__

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research department Other specialized departments followed suitBy World War I the standard functions of a manufacturer had beendeveloped research and engineering manufacturing sales financeand accounting and a little later human resources (or personnel)

Even more important for its impact on enterprisemdashand on theworld economy in generalmdashwas another management-directeddevelopment that took place at this time That was the applicationof management to manual work in the form of training The childof wartime necessity training has propelled the transformation ofthe world economy in the last forty years because it allows low-wagecountries to do something that traditional economic theory hadsaid could never be done to become efficientmdashand yet still low-wagemdashcompetitors almost overnight

Adam Smith reported that it took several hundred years for acountry or region to develop a tradition of labor and the expertise inmanual and managerial skills needed to produce and market a givenproduct whether cotton textiles or violins

During World War I however large numbers of unskilledpreindustrial people had to be made productive workers in practi-cally no time To meet this need businesses in the United Statesand the United Kingdom began to apply the theory of scientificmanagement developed by Frederick W Taylor between 1885 and1910 to the systematic training of blue-collar workers on a largescale They analyzed tasks and broke them down into individualunskilled operations that could then be learned quite quickly Fur-ther developed in World War II training was then picked up by theJapanese and twenty years later by the South Koreans who madeit the basis for their countriesrsquo phenomenal development

During the 1920s and 1930s management was applied to manymore areas and aspects of the manufacturing business Decentraliza-tion for instance arose to combine the advantages of bigness andthe advantages of smallness within one enterprise Accounting wentfrom ldquobookkeepingrdquo to analysis and control Planning grew out ofthe ldquoGantt chartsrdquo designed in 1917 and 1918 to plan war produc-tion and so did the use of analytical logic and statistics which

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m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 7

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employ quantification to convert experience and intuition into def-initions information and diagnosis Marketing evolved as a resultof applying management concepts to distribution and sellingMoreover as early as the mid-1920s and early 1930s some Ameri-can management pioneers such as Thomas Watson Sr at thefledgling IBM Robert E Wood at Sears Roebuck and GeorgeElton Mayo at the Harvard Business School began to question theway manufacturing was organized They concluded that the assem-bly line was a short-term compromise Despite its tremendous pro-ductivity it was poor economics because of its inflexibility poor useof human resources even poor engineering They began the think-ing and experimenting that eventually led to ldquoautomationrdquo as theway to organize the manufacturing process and to teamwork qual-ity circles and the information-based organization as the way tomanage human resources Every one of these managerial innova-tions represented the application of knowledge to work the substi-tution of system and information for guesswork brawn and toilEvery one to use Frederick Taylorrsquos term replaced ldquoworkingharderrdquo with ldquoworking smarterrdquo

The powerful effect of these changes became apparent duringWorld War II To the very end the Germans were by far the betterstrategists Having much shorter interior lines they needed fewersupport troops and could match their opponents in combatstrength Yet the Allies wonmdashtheir victory achieved by manage-ment The United States with one-fifth the population of all theother belligerents combined had almost as many men in uniformYet it produced more war materieacutel than all the others takentogether It managed to transport the stuff to fighting fronts as farapart as China Russia India Africa and Western Europe Nowonder then that by the warrsquos end almost all the world hadbecome management-conscious Or that management emerged as arecognizably distinct kind of work one that could be studied anddeveloped into a disciplinemdashas happened in each country that hasenjoyed economic leadership during the postwar period

After World War II we began to see that management is not

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 7

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-1__0__

+1__

exclusively business management It pertains to every human effortthat brings together in one organization people of diverse knowl-edge and skills It needs to be applied to all third-sector institutionssuch as hospitals universities churches arts organizations andsocial service agencies which since World War II have grown fasterin the United States than either business or government For eventhough the need to manage volunteers or raise funds may differen-tiate nonprofit managers from their for-profit peers many more oftheir responsibilities are the samemdashamong them defining the rightstrategy and goals developing people measuring performance andmarketing the organizationrsquos services Management worldwide hasbecome the new social function

Management and Entrepreneurship

One important advance in the discipline and practice of manage-ment is that both now embrace entrepreneurship and innovation Asham fight these days pits ldquomanagementrdquo against ldquoentrepreneur-shiprdquo as adversaries if not as mutually exclusive Thatrsquos like sayingthat the fingering hand and the bow hand of the violinist areldquoadversariesrdquo or ldquomutually exclusiverdquo Both are always needed andat the same time And both have to be coordinated and worktogether Any existing organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital goes down fast if it does not innovateConversely any new organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital collapses if it does not manage Not toinnovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing orga-nizations Not to know how to manage is the single largest reasonfor the failure of new ventures

Yet few management books have paid attention to entrepreneur-ship and innovation One reason is that during the period afterWorld War II when most of those books were written managingthe existing rather than innovating the new and different was thedominant task During this period most institutions developed

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m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 9

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along lines laid down thirty or fifty years earlier This has nowchanged dramatically We have again entered an era of innovationand it is by no means confined to ldquohigh-techrdquo or to technology gen-erally In fact social innovationmdashas this chapter tries to makeclearmdashmay be of greater importance and have much greater impactthan any scientific or technical invention Furthermore we nowhave a ldquodisciplinerdquo of entrepreneurship and innovation (see myInnovation and Entrepreneurship 1986) It is clearly a part of man-agement and rests indeed on well-known and tested managementprinciples It applies to both existing organizations and new ven-tures and to both business and nonbusiness institutions includinggovernment

The Accountabi l i ty of Management

Management books tend to focus on the function of managementinside its organization Few yet accept it as a social function But itis precisely because management has become so pervasive as a socialfunction that it faces its most serious challenge To whom is man-agement accountable And for what On what does managementbase its power What gives it legitimacy

These are not business questions or economic questions Theyare political questions Yet they underlie the most serious assault onmanagement in its historymdasha far more serious assault than anymounted by Marxists or labor unions the hostile takeover AnAmerican phenomenon at first it has spread throughout the non-Communist developed world What made it possible was the emer-gence of the employee pension funds as the controlling shareholdersof publicly owned companies The pension funds while legallyldquoownersrdquo are economically ldquoinvestorsrdquomdashand indeed often ldquospecu-latorsrdquo They have no interest in the enterprise and its welfare Infact in the United States at least they are ldquotrusteesrdquo and are notsupposed to consider anything but immediate pecuniary gainWhat underlies the takeover bid is the postulate that the enterprisersquos

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-1__0__

+1__

sole function is to provide the largest possible immediate gain to theshareholder In the absence of any other justification for managementand enterprise the ldquoraiderrdquo with his hostile takeover bid prevailsmdashand only too often immediately dismantles or loots the going con-cern sacrificing long-range wealth-producing capacity to short-termgains

Managementmdashand not only in the business enterprisemdashhas tobe accountable for performance But how is performance to bedefined How is it to be measured How is it to be enforced And towhom should management be accountable That these questionscan be asked is in itself a measure of the success and importance ofmanagement That they need to be asked is however also anindictment of managers They have not yet faced up to the fact thatthey represent powermdashand power has to be accountable has to belegitimate They have not yet faced up to the fact that they matter

What Is Management

But what is management Is it a bag of techniques and tricks Abundle of analytical tools like those taught in business schoolsThese are important to be sure just as thermometer and anatomyare important to the physician But the evolution and history ofmanagementmdashits successes as well as its problemsmdashteach thatmanagement is above all else based on a very few essential princi-ples To be specific

Management is about human beings Its task is to make peo-ple capable of joint performance to make their strengthseffective and their weaknesses irrelevant This is what organi-zation is all about and it is the reason that management is thecritical determining factor These days practically all of uswork for a managed institution large or small business ornonbusiness We depend on management for our livelihoods

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And our ability to contribute to society also depends as muchon the management of the organization for which we work asit does on our own skills dedication and effort

Because management deals with the integration of people in acommon venture it is deeply embedded in culture Whatmanagers do in West Germany in the United Kingdom inthe United States in Japan or in Brazil is exactly the sameHow they do it may be quite different Thus one of the basicchallenges managers in a developing country face is to findand identify those parts of their own tradition history andculture that can be used as management building blocks Thedifference between Japanrsquos economic success and Indiarsquos rela-tive backwardness is largely explained by the fact thatJapanese managers were able to plant imported managementconcepts in their own cultural soil and make them grow

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals andshared values Without such commitment there is no enter-prise there is only a mob The enterprise must have simpleclear and unifying objectives The mission of the organiza-tion has to be clear enough and big enough to provide com-mon vision The goals that embody it have to be clear publicand constantly reaffirmed Managementrsquos first job is to thinkthrough set and exemplify those objectives values andgoals

Management must also enable the enterprise and each of itsmembers to grow and develop as needs and opportunitieschange Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institu-tion Training and development must be built into it on alllevelsmdashtraining and development that never stop

Every enterprise is composed of people with different skillsand knowledge doing many different kinds of work It mustbe built on communication and on individual responsibilityAll members need to think through what they aim to accom-plishmdashand make sure that their associates know and under-

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 11

12 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

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stand that aim All have to think through what they owe toothersmdashand make sure that others understand All have tothink through what they in turn need from othersmdashandmake sure that others know what is expected of them

Neither the quantity of output nor the ldquobottom linerdquo is byitself an adequate measure of the performance of managementand enterprise Market standing innovation productivitydevelopment of people quality financial resultsmdashall are cru-cial to an organizationrsquos performance and to its survival Non-profit institutions too need measurements in a number ofareas specific to their mission Just as a human being needs adiversity of measures to assess his or her health and perfor-mance an organization needs a diversity of measures to assessits health and performance Performance has to be built intothe enterprise and its management it has to be measuredmdashorat least judgedmdashand it has to be continually improved

Finally the single most important thing to remember aboutany enterprise is that results exist only on the outside Theresult of a business is a satisfied customer The result of a hos-pital is a healed patient The result of a school is a studentwho has learned something and puts it to work ten years laterInside an enterprise there are only costs

Managers who understand these principles and function in theirlight will be achieving accomplished managers

Management as a Libera l Ar t

Thirty years ago the English scientist and novelist C P Snowtalked of the ldquotwo culturesrdquo of contemporary society Managementhowever fits neither Snowrsquos ldquohumanistrdquo nor his ldquoscientistrdquo It dealswith action and application and its test is results This makes it atechnology But management also deals with people their valuestheir growth and developmentmdashand this makes it a humanity So

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m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 13

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does its concern with and impact on social structure and the com-munity Indeed as everyone has learned who like this author hasbeen working with managers of all kinds of institutions for longyears management is deeply involved in moral concernsmdashthenature of man good and evil

Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal artmdashldquoliberalrdquo because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge self-knowledge wisdom and leadership ldquoartrdquo because it is alsoconcerned with practice and application Managers draw on all theknowledges and insights of the humanities and the social sciencesmdashon psychology and philosophy on economics and history onethicsmdashas well as on the physical sciences But they have to focusthis knowledge on effectiveness and resultsmdashon healing a sickpatient teaching a student building a bridge designing and sellinga ldquouser-friendlyrdquo software program

For these reasons management will increasingly be the disci-pline and the practice through which the ldquohumanitiesrdquo will againacquire recognition impact and relevance

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 13

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II

T H E I N D I V I D U A L

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+1__

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13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

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+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

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reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

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+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

t h e e s s e n t i a l

D R U C K E R

Se lec t ions f rom the Management Works o f

p e t e r f d r u c k e r

a n e x c e r p t f r o m

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page i

THE ESSENTIAL DRUCKER Copyright copy 2001 Peter F Drucker All rights

reserved under international and Pan-American Copyright Conventions By payment

of the required fees you have been granted the non-exclusive non-transferable license

to access and read the text of this e-book on screen No part of this text may be repro-

duced transmitted down-loaded decompiled reverse engineered or stored in or

introduced into any information storage and retrieval system in any form or by any

means whether electronic or mechanical now known or hereinafter invented without

the express written permission of PerfectBoundtrade

PerfectBound tradeand the PerfectBoundtrade logo are trademarks of HarperCollins

Publishers

Print edition first published in 2001 by HarperCollins Publishers Inc

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page ii

c o n t e n t s

Introduction The Origin and Purpose of The Essential Drucker

I m a n a g e m e n t

01 Management as Social Function and Liberal Art0

I I t h e i n d i v i d u a l

13 Effectiveness Must Be Learned

I I I s o c i e t y

23 A Century of Social TransformationmdashEmergence of Knowledge Society

About the AuthorCreditsAbout PerfectBound e-Books

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13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page iv

The Essential Drucker is a selection from my sixty years of workand writing on management It begins with my book The

Future of Industrial Man (1942) and ends (so far at least) with my1999 book Management Challenges for the 21st Century

The Essential Drucker has two purposes First it offers I hope acoherent and fairly comprehensive Introduction to ManagementBut second it gives an Overview of my works on management andthus answers a question that my editors and I have been asked againand again Where do I start to read Drucker Which of his writingsare essential

Atsuo Ueda longtime Japanese friend first conceived TheEssential Drucker He himself has had a distinguished career inJapanese management And having reached the age of sixty herecently started a second career and became the founder and chiefexecutive officer of a new technical university in Tokyo But forthirty years Mr Ueda has also been my Japanese translator and edi-tor He has actually translated many of my books several times asthey went into new Japanese editions He is thus thoroughly famil-iar with my workmdashin fact he knows it better than I do As a result

__ -1__ 0__+1

introduct ion the or ig in and purpose of

T H E E S S E N T I A L D R U C K E R

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page v

he increasingly got invited to conduct Japanese conferences andseminars on my work and found himself being asked over and overagainmdashespecially by younger people both students and executivesat the start of their careersmdashWhere do I start reading Drucker

This led Mr Ueda to reread my entire work to select from itthe most pertinent chapters and to abridge them so that they readas if they had originally been written as one cohesive text Theresult was a three-volume essential Drucker of fifty-seven chap-tersmdashone volume on the management of organizations one vol-ume on the individual in the society of organizations one onsociety in generalmdashwhich was published in Japan in the summerand fall of 2000 and has met with great success It is also beingpublished in Taiwan mainland China and Korea and inArgentina Mexico and Brazil

It is Mr Uedarsquos text that is being used for the US and UKeditions of The Essential Drucker But these editions not only areless than half the size of Mr Uedarsquos original Japanese versionmdashtwenty-six chapters versus the three-volumesrsquo fifty-seven They alsohave a somewhat different focus Cass Canfield Jr at HarperCollinsin the United Statesmdashlongtime friend and my US editor for overthirty yearsmdashalso came to the conclusion a few years ago that therewas need for an introduction to and overview of my sixty years ofmanagement writings But hemdashrightlymdashsaw that the US andUK (and probably altogether the Western) audience for such awork would be both broader and narrower than the audience forthe Japanese venture It would be broader because there is in theWest a growing number of people who while not themselves exec-utives have come to see management as an area of public interestthere are also an increasing number of students in colleges and uni-versities who while not necessarily management students see anunderstanding of management as part of a general education andfinally there are a large and rapidly growing number of mid-careermanagers and professionals who are flocking to advanced-executiveprograms both in universities and in their employing organiza-tions The focus would however also be narrower because these

vi i n t r o d u c t i o n

-1__0__

+1__

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page vi

additional audiences need and want less an introduction to andoverview of Druckerrsquos work than they want a concise comprehen-sive and sharply focused Introduction to Management and tomanagement alone And thus while using Mr Uedarsquos editing andabridging Cass Canfield Jr (with my full indeed my enthusiasticsupport) selected and edited the texts from the Japanese three-volumeedition into a comprehensive cohesive and self-contained intro-duction to managementmdashboth of the management of an enterpriseand of the self-management of the individual whether executive orprofessional within an enterprise and altogether in our society ofmanaged organizations

My readers as well as I owe to both Atsuo Ueda and Cass Can-field Jr an enormous debt of gratitude The two put an incredibleamount of work and dedication into The Essential Drucker And theend product is not only the best introduction to onersquos work anyauthor could possibly have asked for It is also I am convinced atruly unique cohesive and self-contained introduction to manage-ment its basic principles and concerns its problems challengesopportunities

This volume as said before is also an overview of my works onmanagement Readers may therefore want to know where to go inmy books to further pursue this or that topic or this or that area ofparticular interest to them Here therefore are the sources in mybooks for each of twenty-six chapters of the The Essential Drucker

Chapter 1 and 26 are excerpted from The New Realities (1988)Chapters 2 3 5 18 are excerpted from Management Tasks

Responsibilities Practices (1974)Chapters 4 and 19 are excerpted from Managing for the Future

(1992) and were first published in the Harvard Business Review(1989) and in the Wall Street Journal (1988) respectively

Chapters 6 15 and 21 are excerpted from Management Chal-lenges for the 21st Century (1999)

Chapters 7 and 23 are excerpted from Management in a Timeof Great Change (1995) and were first published in the Harvard

i n t r o d u c t i o n vii

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page vii

Business Review (1994) and in the Atlantic Monthly (1996) respec-tively

Chapter 8 was excerpted from The Practice of Management(1954)

Chapter 9 was excerpted from The Frontiers of Management(1986) and was first published in the Harvard Business Review(1985)

Chapters 10 11 12 20 24 were excerpted from Innovation andEntrepreneurship (1985)

Chapters 13 14 16 17 were excerpted from The Effective Exec-utive (1966)

Chapters 22 and 25 were excerpted from Post-Capitalist Society(1993)

All these books are still in print in the United States and inmany other countries

This one-volume edition of The Essential Drucker does nothowever include any excerpts from five important Managementbooks of mine The Future of Industrial Man (1942) Concept of theCorporation (1946) Managing for Results (1964 the first book onwhat is now called ldquostrategyrdquo a term unknown for business fortyyears ago) Managing in Turbulent Times (1980) Managing theNon-Profit Organization (1990) These are important books andstill widely read and used But their subject matter is more special-izedmdashand in some cases also more technicalmdashthan that of thebooks from which the chapters of the present book were chosenmdashand thus had to be left out of a work that calls itself Essential

mdashPeter F DruckerClaremont California

Spring 2001

viii i n t r o d u c t i o n

-1__0__

+1__

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page viii

__ -1__ 0__+1

I

M A N A G E M E N T

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 1

-1__0__

+1__

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 2

When Karl Marx was beginning work on Das Kapital in the1850s the phenomenon of management was unknown So

were the enterprises that managers run The largest manufacturingcompany around was a Manchester cotton mill employing fewerthan three hundred people and owned by Marxrsquos friend and collab-orator Friedrich Engels And in Engelsrsquos millmdashone of the mostprofitable businesses of its daymdashthere were no ldquomanagersrdquo onlyldquocharge handsrdquo who themselves workers enforced discipline over ahandful of fellow ldquoproletariansrdquo

Rarely in human history has any institution emerged as quicklyas management or had as great an impact so fast In less than 150years management has transformed the social and economic fabricof the worldrsquos developed countries It has created a global economyand set new rules for countries that would participate in that econ-omy as equals And it has itself been transformed Few executivesare aware of the tremendous impact management has had Indeed agood many are like M Jourdain the character in Moliegraverersquos Bour-geois Gentilhomme who did not know that he spoke prose Theybarely realize that they practicemdashor mispracticemdashmanagement As

__ -1__ 0__+1

1

management a ssoc ial funct ion and

l iberal art

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 3

4 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

a result they are ill prepared for the tremendous challenges thatnow confront them The truly important problems managers facedo not come from technology or politics they do not originate out-side of management and enterprise They are problems caused bythe very success of management itself

To be sure the fundamental task of management remains thesame to make people capable of joint performance through com-mon goals common values the right structure and the trainingand development they need to perform and to respond to changeBut the very meaning of this task has changed if only because theperformance of management has converted the workforce from onecomposed largely of unskilled laborers to one of highly educatedknowledge workers

The Orig ins and Deve lopment of Management

On the threshold of World War I a few thinkers were just becom-ing aware of managementrsquos existence But few people even in themost advanced countries had anything to do with it Now the largestsingle group in the labor force more than one-third of the total arepeople whom the US Bureau of the Census calls ldquomanagerial andprofessionalrdquo Management has been the main agent of this trans-formation Management explains why for the first time in humanhistory we can employ large numbers of knowledgeable skilledpeople in productive work No earlier society could do thisIndeed no earlier society could support more than a handful ofsuch people Until quite recently no one knew how to put peoplewith different skills and knowledge together to achieve commongoals

Eighteenth-century China was the envy of contemporary West-ern intellectuals because it supplied more jobs for educated peoplethan all of Europe didmdashsome twenty thousand per year Today theUnited States with about the same population China then hadgraduates nearly a million college students a year few of whom have

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 4

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 5

__ -1__ 0__+1

the slightest difficulty finding well-paid employment Managementenables us to employ them

Knowledge especially advanced knowledge is always special-ized By itself it produces nothing Yet a modern business and notonly the largest ones may employ up to ten thousand highly knowl-edgeable people who represent up to sixty different knowledge areasEngineers of all sorts designers marketing experts economistsstatisticians psychologists planners accountants human-resourcespeoplemdashall working together in a joint venture None would beeffective without the managed enterprise

There is no point in asking which came first the educationalexplosion of the last one hundred years or the management that putthis knowledge to productive use Modern management and mod-ern enterprise could not exist without the knowledge base thatdeveloped societies have built But equally it is management andmanagement alone that makes effective all this knowledge andthese knowledgeable people The emergence of management hasconverted knowledge from social ornament and luxury into the truecapital of any economy

Not many business leaders could have predicted this develop-ment back in 1870 when large enterprises were first beginning totake shape The reason was not so much lack of foresight as lack ofprecedent At that time the only large permanent organizationaround was the army Not surprisingly therefore its command-and-control structure became the model for the men who wereputting together transcontinental railroads steel mills modernbanks and department stores The command model with a veryfew at the top giving orders and a great many at the bottom obeyingthem remained the norm for nearly one hundred years But it wasnever as static as its longevity might suggest On the contrary itbegan to change almost at once as specialized knowledge of all sortspoured into enterprise

The first university-trained engineer in manufacturing industrywas hired by Siemens in Germany in 1867mdashhis name wasFriedrich von Hefner-Alteneck Within five years he had built a

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 5

6 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

research department Other specialized departments followed suitBy World War I the standard functions of a manufacturer had beendeveloped research and engineering manufacturing sales financeand accounting and a little later human resources (or personnel)

Even more important for its impact on enterprisemdashand on theworld economy in generalmdashwas another management-directeddevelopment that took place at this time That was the applicationof management to manual work in the form of training The childof wartime necessity training has propelled the transformation ofthe world economy in the last forty years because it allows low-wagecountries to do something that traditional economic theory hadsaid could never be done to become efficientmdashand yet still low-wagemdashcompetitors almost overnight

Adam Smith reported that it took several hundred years for acountry or region to develop a tradition of labor and the expertise inmanual and managerial skills needed to produce and market a givenproduct whether cotton textiles or violins

During World War I however large numbers of unskilledpreindustrial people had to be made productive workers in practi-cally no time To meet this need businesses in the United Statesand the United Kingdom began to apply the theory of scientificmanagement developed by Frederick W Taylor between 1885 and1910 to the systematic training of blue-collar workers on a largescale They analyzed tasks and broke them down into individualunskilled operations that could then be learned quite quickly Fur-ther developed in World War II training was then picked up by theJapanese and twenty years later by the South Koreans who madeit the basis for their countriesrsquo phenomenal development

During the 1920s and 1930s management was applied to manymore areas and aspects of the manufacturing business Decentraliza-tion for instance arose to combine the advantages of bigness andthe advantages of smallness within one enterprise Accounting wentfrom ldquobookkeepingrdquo to analysis and control Planning grew out ofthe ldquoGantt chartsrdquo designed in 1917 and 1918 to plan war produc-tion and so did the use of analytical logic and statistics which

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 6

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 7

__ -1__ 0__+1

employ quantification to convert experience and intuition into def-initions information and diagnosis Marketing evolved as a resultof applying management concepts to distribution and sellingMoreover as early as the mid-1920s and early 1930s some Ameri-can management pioneers such as Thomas Watson Sr at thefledgling IBM Robert E Wood at Sears Roebuck and GeorgeElton Mayo at the Harvard Business School began to question theway manufacturing was organized They concluded that the assem-bly line was a short-term compromise Despite its tremendous pro-ductivity it was poor economics because of its inflexibility poor useof human resources even poor engineering They began the think-ing and experimenting that eventually led to ldquoautomationrdquo as theway to organize the manufacturing process and to teamwork qual-ity circles and the information-based organization as the way tomanage human resources Every one of these managerial innova-tions represented the application of knowledge to work the substi-tution of system and information for guesswork brawn and toilEvery one to use Frederick Taylorrsquos term replaced ldquoworkingharderrdquo with ldquoworking smarterrdquo

The powerful effect of these changes became apparent duringWorld War II To the very end the Germans were by far the betterstrategists Having much shorter interior lines they needed fewersupport troops and could match their opponents in combatstrength Yet the Allies wonmdashtheir victory achieved by manage-ment The United States with one-fifth the population of all theother belligerents combined had almost as many men in uniformYet it produced more war materieacutel than all the others takentogether It managed to transport the stuff to fighting fronts as farapart as China Russia India Africa and Western Europe Nowonder then that by the warrsquos end almost all the world hadbecome management-conscious Or that management emerged as arecognizably distinct kind of work one that could be studied anddeveloped into a disciplinemdashas happened in each country that hasenjoyed economic leadership during the postwar period

After World War II we began to see that management is not

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 7

8 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

exclusively business management It pertains to every human effortthat brings together in one organization people of diverse knowl-edge and skills It needs to be applied to all third-sector institutionssuch as hospitals universities churches arts organizations andsocial service agencies which since World War II have grown fasterin the United States than either business or government For eventhough the need to manage volunteers or raise funds may differen-tiate nonprofit managers from their for-profit peers many more oftheir responsibilities are the samemdashamong them defining the rightstrategy and goals developing people measuring performance andmarketing the organizationrsquos services Management worldwide hasbecome the new social function

Management and Entrepreneurship

One important advance in the discipline and practice of manage-ment is that both now embrace entrepreneurship and innovation Asham fight these days pits ldquomanagementrdquo against ldquoentrepreneur-shiprdquo as adversaries if not as mutually exclusive Thatrsquos like sayingthat the fingering hand and the bow hand of the violinist areldquoadversariesrdquo or ldquomutually exclusiverdquo Both are always needed andat the same time And both have to be coordinated and worktogether Any existing organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital goes down fast if it does not innovateConversely any new organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital collapses if it does not manage Not toinnovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing orga-nizations Not to know how to manage is the single largest reasonfor the failure of new ventures

Yet few management books have paid attention to entrepreneur-ship and innovation One reason is that during the period afterWorld War II when most of those books were written managingthe existing rather than innovating the new and different was thedominant task During this period most institutions developed

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 8

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 9

__ -1__ 0__+1

along lines laid down thirty or fifty years earlier This has nowchanged dramatically We have again entered an era of innovationand it is by no means confined to ldquohigh-techrdquo or to technology gen-erally In fact social innovationmdashas this chapter tries to makeclearmdashmay be of greater importance and have much greater impactthan any scientific or technical invention Furthermore we nowhave a ldquodisciplinerdquo of entrepreneurship and innovation (see myInnovation and Entrepreneurship 1986) It is clearly a part of man-agement and rests indeed on well-known and tested managementprinciples It applies to both existing organizations and new ven-tures and to both business and nonbusiness institutions includinggovernment

The Accountabi l i ty of Management

Management books tend to focus on the function of managementinside its organization Few yet accept it as a social function But itis precisely because management has become so pervasive as a socialfunction that it faces its most serious challenge To whom is man-agement accountable And for what On what does managementbase its power What gives it legitimacy

These are not business questions or economic questions Theyare political questions Yet they underlie the most serious assault onmanagement in its historymdasha far more serious assault than anymounted by Marxists or labor unions the hostile takeover AnAmerican phenomenon at first it has spread throughout the non-Communist developed world What made it possible was the emer-gence of the employee pension funds as the controlling shareholdersof publicly owned companies The pension funds while legallyldquoownersrdquo are economically ldquoinvestorsrdquomdashand indeed often ldquospecu-latorsrdquo They have no interest in the enterprise and its welfare Infact in the United States at least they are ldquotrusteesrdquo and are notsupposed to consider anything but immediate pecuniary gainWhat underlies the takeover bid is the postulate that the enterprisersquos

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 9

10 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

sole function is to provide the largest possible immediate gain to theshareholder In the absence of any other justification for managementand enterprise the ldquoraiderrdquo with his hostile takeover bid prevailsmdashand only too often immediately dismantles or loots the going con-cern sacrificing long-range wealth-producing capacity to short-termgains

Managementmdashand not only in the business enterprisemdashhas tobe accountable for performance But how is performance to bedefined How is it to be measured How is it to be enforced And towhom should management be accountable That these questionscan be asked is in itself a measure of the success and importance ofmanagement That they need to be asked is however also anindictment of managers They have not yet faced up to the fact thatthey represent powermdashand power has to be accountable has to belegitimate They have not yet faced up to the fact that they matter

What Is Management

But what is management Is it a bag of techniques and tricks Abundle of analytical tools like those taught in business schoolsThese are important to be sure just as thermometer and anatomyare important to the physician But the evolution and history ofmanagementmdashits successes as well as its problemsmdashteach thatmanagement is above all else based on a very few essential princi-ples To be specific

Management is about human beings Its task is to make peo-ple capable of joint performance to make their strengthseffective and their weaknesses irrelevant This is what organi-zation is all about and it is the reason that management is thecritical determining factor These days practically all of uswork for a managed institution large or small business ornonbusiness We depend on management for our livelihoods

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 10

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 11

__ -1__ 0__+1

And our ability to contribute to society also depends as muchon the management of the organization for which we work asit does on our own skills dedication and effort

Because management deals with the integration of people in acommon venture it is deeply embedded in culture Whatmanagers do in West Germany in the United Kingdom inthe United States in Japan or in Brazil is exactly the sameHow they do it may be quite different Thus one of the basicchallenges managers in a developing country face is to findand identify those parts of their own tradition history andculture that can be used as management building blocks Thedifference between Japanrsquos economic success and Indiarsquos rela-tive backwardness is largely explained by the fact thatJapanese managers were able to plant imported managementconcepts in their own cultural soil and make them grow

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals andshared values Without such commitment there is no enter-prise there is only a mob The enterprise must have simpleclear and unifying objectives The mission of the organiza-tion has to be clear enough and big enough to provide com-mon vision The goals that embody it have to be clear publicand constantly reaffirmed Managementrsquos first job is to thinkthrough set and exemplify those objectives values andgoals

Management must also enable the enterprise and each of itsmembers to grow and develop as needs and opportunitieschange Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institu-tion Training and development must be built into it on alllevelsmdashtraining and development that never stop

Every enterprise is composed of people with different skillsand knowledge doing many different kinds of work It mustbe built on communication and on individual responsibilityAll members need to think through what they aim to accom-plishmdashand make sure that their associates know and under-

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 11

12 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

stand that aim All have to think through what they owe toothersmdashand make sure that others understand All have tothink through what they in turn need from othersmdashandmake sure that others know what is expected of them

Neither the quantity of output nor the ldquobottom linerdquo is byitself an adequate measure of the performance of managementand enterprise Market standing innovation productivitydevelopment of people quality financial resultsmdashall are cru-cial to an organizationrsquos performance and to its survival Non-profit institutions too need measurements in a number ofareas specific to their mission Just as a human being needs adiversity of measures to assess his or her health and perfor-mance an organization needs a diversity of measures to assessits health and performance Performance has to be built intothe enterprise and its management it has to be measuredmdashorat least judgedmdashand it has to be continually improved

Finally the single most important thing to remember aboutany enterprise is that results exist only on the outside Theresult of a business is a satisfied customer The result of a hos-pital is a healed patient The result of a school is a studentwho has learned something and puts it to work ten years laterInside an enterprise there are only costs

Managers who understand these principles and function in theirlight will be achieving accomplished managers

Management as a Libera l Ar t

Thirty years ago the English scientist and novelist C P Snowtalked of the ldquotwo culturesrdquo of contemporary society Managementhowever fits neither Snowrsquos ldquohumanistrdquo nor his ldquoscientistrdquo It dealswith action and application and its test is results This makes it atechnology But management also deals with people their valuestheir growth and developmentmdashand this makes it a humanity So

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 12

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 13

__ -1__ 0__+1

does its concern with and impact on social structure and the com-munity Indeed as everyone has learned who like this author hasbeen working with managers of all kinds of institutions for longyears management is deeply involved in moral concernsmdashthenature of man good and evil

Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal artmdashldquoliberalrdquo because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge self-knowledge wisdom and leadership ldquoartrdquo because it is alsoconcerned with practice and application Managers draw on all theknowledges and insights of the humanities and the social sciencesmdashon psychology and philosophy on economics and history onethicsmdashas well as on the physical sciences But they have to focusthis knowledge on effectiveness and resultsmdashon healing a sickpatient teaching a student building a bridge designing and sellinga ldquouser-friendlyrdquo software program

For these reasons management will increasingly be the disci-pline and the practice through which the ldquohumanitiesrdquo will againacquire recognition impact and relevance

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 13

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 14

__ -1__ 0__+1

II

T H E I N D I V I D U A L

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 15

-1__0__

+1__

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 16

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

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13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

THE ESSENTIAL DRUCKER Copyright copy 2001 Peter F Drucker All rights

reserved under international and Pan-American Copyright Conventions By payment

of the required fees you have been granted the non-exclusive non-transferable license

to access and read the text of this e-book on screen No part of this text may be repro-

duced transmitted down-loaded decompiled reverse engineered or stored in or

introduced into any information storage and retrieval system in any form or by any

means whether electronic or mechanical now known or hereinafter invented without

the express written permission of PerfectBoundtrade

PerfectBound tradeand the PerfectBoundtrade logo are trademarks of HarperCollins

Publishers

Print edition first published in 2001 by HarperCollins Publishers Inc

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page ii

c o n t e n t s

Introduction The Origin and Purpose of The Essential Drucker

I m a n a g e m e n t

01 Management as Social Function and Liberal Art0

I I t h e i n d i v i d u a l

13 Effectiveness Must Be Learned

I I I s o c i e t y

23 A Century of Social TransformationmdashEmergence of Knowledge Society

About the AuthorCreditsAbout PerfectBound e-Books

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The Essential Drucker is a selection from my sixty years of workand writing on management It begins with my book The

Future of Industrial Man (1942) and ends (so far at least) with my1999 book Management Challenges for the 21st Century

The Essential Drucker has two purposes First it offers I hope acoherent and fairly comprehensive Introduction to ManagementBut second it gives an Overview of my works on management andthus answers a question that my editors and I have been asked againand again Where do I start to read Drucker Which of his writingsare essential

Atsuo Ueda longtime Japanese friend first conceived TheEssential Drucker He himself has had a distinguished career inJapanese management And having reached the age of sixty herecently started a second career and became the founder and chiefexecutive officer of a new technical university in Tokyo But forthirty years Mr Ueda has also been my Japanese translator and edi-tor He has actually translated many of my books several times asthey went into new Japanese editions He is thus thoroughly famil-iar with my workmdashin fact he knows it better than I do As a result

__ -1__ 0__+1

introduct ion the or ig in and purpose of

T H E E S S E N T I A L D R U C K E R

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page v

he increasingly got invited to conduct Japanese conferences andseminars on my work and found himself being asked over and overagainmdashespecially by younger people both students and executivesat the start of their careersmdashWhere do I start reading Drucker

This led Mr Ueda to reread my entire work to select from itthe most pertinent chapters and to abridge them so that they readas if they had originally been written as one cohesive text Theresult was a three-volume essential Drucker of fifty-seven chap-tersmdashone volume on the management of organizations one vol-ume on the individual in the society of organizations one onsociety in generalmdashwhich was published in Japan in the summerand fall of 2000 and has met with great success It is also beingpublished in Taiwan mainland China and Korea and inArgentina Mexico and Brazil

It is Mr Uedarsquos text that is being used for the US and UKeditions of The Essential Drucker But these editions not only areless than half the size of Mr Uedarsquos original Japanese versionmdashtwenty-six chapters versus the three-volumesrsquo fifty-seven They alsohave a somewhat different focus Cass Canfield Jr at HarperCollinsin the United Statesmdashlongtime friend and my US editor for overthirty yearsmdashalso came to the conclusion a few years ago that therewas need for an introduction to and overview of my sixty years ofmanagement writings But hemdashrightlymdashsaw that the US andUK (and probably altogether the Western) audience for such awork would be both broader and narrower than the audience forthe Japanese venture It would be broader because there is in theWest a growing number of people who while not themselves exec-utives have come to see management as an area of public interestthere are also an increasing number of students in colleges and uni-versities who while not necessarily management students see anunderstanding of management as part of a general education andfinally there are a large and rapidly growing number of mid-careermanagers and professionals who are flocking to advanced-executiveprograms both in universities and in their employing organiza-tions The focus would however also be narrower because these

vi i n t r o d u c t i o n

-1__0__

+1__

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page vi

additional audiences need and want less an introduction to andoverview of Druckerrsquos work than they want a concise comprehen-sive and sharply focused Introduction to Management and tomanagement alone And thus while using Mr Uedarsquos editing andabridging Cass Canfield Jr (with my full indeed my enthusiasticsupport) selected and edited the texts from the Japanese three-volumeedition into a comprehensive cohesive and self-contained intro-duction to managementmdashboth of the management of an enterpriseand of the self-management of the individual whether executive orprofessional within an enterprise and altogether in our society ofmanaged organizations

My readers as well as I owe to both Atsuo Ueda and Cass Can-field Jr an enormous debt of gratitude The two put an incredibleamount of work and dedication into The Essential Drucker And theend product is not only the best introduction to onersquos work anyauthor could possibly have asked for It is also I am convinced atruly unique cohesive and self-contained introduction to manage-ment its basic principles and concerns its problems challengesopportunities

This volume as said before is also an overview of my works onmanagement Readers may therefore want to know where to go inmy books to further pursue this or that topic or this or that area ofparticular interest to them Here therefore are the sources in mybooks for each of twenty-six chapters of the The Essential Drucker

Chapter 1 and 26 are excerpted from The New Realities (1988)Chapters 2 3 5 18 are excerpted from Management Tasks

Responsibilities Practices (1974)Chapters 4 and 19 are excerpted from Managing for the Future

(1992) and were first published in the Harvard Business Review(1989) and in the Wall Street Journal (1988) respectively

Chapters 6 15 and 21 are excerpted from Management Chal-lenges for the 21st Century (1999)

Chapters 7 and 23 are excerpted from Management in a Timeof Great Change (1995) and were first published in the Harvard

i n t r o d u c t i o n vii

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page vii

Business Review (1994) and in the Atlantic Monthly (1996) respec-tively

Chapter 8 was excerpted from The Practice of Management(1954)

Chapter 9 was excerpted from The Frontiers of Management(1986) and was first published in the Harvard Business Review(1985)

Chapters 10 11 12 20 24 were excerpted from Innovation andEntrepreneurship (1985)

Chapters 13 14 16 17 were excerpted from The Effective Exec-utive (1966)

Chapters 22 and 25 were excerpted from Post-Capitalist Society(1993)

All these books are still in print in the United States and inmany other countries

This one-volume edition of The Essential Drucker does nothowever include any excerpts from five important Managementbooks of mine The Future of Industrial Man (1942) Concept of theCorporation (1946) Managing for Results (1964 the first book onwhat is now called ldquostrategyrdquo a term unknown for business fortyyears ago) Managing in Turbulent Times (1980) Managing theNon-Profit Organization (1990) These are important books andstill widely read and used But their subject matter is more special-izedmdashand in some cases also more technicalmdashthan that of thebooks from which the chapters of the present book were chosenmdashand thus had to be left out of a work that calls itself Essential

mdashPeter F DruckerClaremont California

Spring 2001

viii i n t r o d u c t i o n

-1__0__

+1__

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page viii

__ -1__ 0__+1

I

M A N A G E M E N T

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 1

-1__0__

+1__

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 2

When Karl Marx was beginning work on Das Kapital in the1850s the phenomenon of management was unknown So

were the enterprises that managers run The largest manufacturingcompany around was a Manchester cotton mill employing fewerthan three hundred people and owned by Marxrsquos friend and collab-orator Friedrich Engels And in Engelsrsquos millmdashone of the mostprofitable businesses of its daymdashthere were no ldquomanagersrdquo onlyldquocharge handsrdquo who themselves workers enforced discipline over ahandful of fellow ldquoproletariansrdquo

Rarely in human history has any institution emerged as quicklyas management or had as great an impact so fast In less than 150years management has transformed the social and economic fabricof the worldrsquos developed countries It has created a global economyand set new rules for countries that would participate in that econ-omy as equals And it has itself been transformed Few executivesare aware of the tremendous impact management has had Indeed agood many are like M Jourdain the character in Moliegraverersquos Bour-geois Gentilhomme who did not know that he spoke prose Theybarely realize that they practicemdashor mispracticemdashmanagement As

__ -1__ 0__+1

1

management a ssoc ial funct ion and

l iberal art

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 3

4 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

a result they are ill prepared for the tremendous challenges thatnow confront them The truly important problems managers facedo not come from technology or politics they do not originate out-side of management and enterprise They are problems caused bythe very success of management itself

To be sure the fundamental task of management remains thesame to make people capable of joint performance through com-mon goals common values the right structure and the trainingand development they need to perform and to respond to changeBut the very meaning of this task has changed if only because theperformance of management has converted the workforce from onecomposed largely of unskilled laborers to one of highly educatedknowledge workers

The Orig ins and Deve lopment of Management

On the threshold of World War I a few thinkers were just becom-ing aware of managementrsquos existence But few people even in themost advanced countries had anything to do with it Now the largestsingle group in the labor force more than one-third of the total arepeople whom the US Bureau of the Census calls ldquomanagerial andprofessionalrdquo Management has been the main agent of this trans-formation Management explains why for the first time in humanhistory we can employ large numbers of knowledgeable skilledpeople in productive work No earlier society could do thisIndeed no earlier society could support more than a handful ofsuch people Until quite recently no one knew how to put peoplewith different skills and knowledge together to achieve commongoals

Eighteenth-century China was the envy of contemporary West-ern intellectuals because it supplied more jobs for educated peoplethan all of Europe didmdashsome twenty thousand per year Today theUnited States with about the same population China then hadgraduates nearly a million college students a year few of whom have

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 4

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 5

__ -1__ 0__+1

the slightest difficulty finding well-paid employment Managementenables us to employ them

Knowledge especially advanced knowledge is always special-ized By itself it produces nothing Yet a modern business and notonly the largest ones may employ up to ten thousand highly knowl-edgeable people who represent up to sixty different knowledge areasEngineers of all sorts designers marketing experts economistsstatisticians psychologists planners accountants human-resourcespeoplemdashall working together in a joint venture None would beeffective without the managed enterprise

There is no point in asking which came first the educationalexplosion of the last one hundred years or the management that putthis knowledge to productive use Modern management and mod-ern enterprise could not exist without the knowledge base thatdeveloped societies have built But equally it is management andmanagement alone that makes effective all this knowledge andthese knowledgeable people The emergence of management hasconverted knowledge from social ornament and luxury into the truecapital of any economy

Not many business leaders could have predicted this develop-ment back in 1870 when large enterprises were first beginning totake shape The reason was not so much lack of foresight as lack ofprecedent At that time the only large permanent organizationaround was the army Not surprisingly therefore its command-and-control structure became the model for the men who wereputting together transcontinental railroads steel mills modernbanks and department stores The command model with a veryfew at the top giving orders and a great many at the bottom obeyingthem remained the norm for nearly one hundred years But it wasnever as static as its longevity might suggest On the contrary itbegan to change almost at once as specialized knowledge of all sortspoured into enterprise

The first university-trained engineer in manufacturing industrywas hired by Siemens in Germany in 1867mdashhis name wasFriedrich von Hefner-Alteneck Within five years he had built a

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 5

6 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

research department Other specialized departments followed suitBy World War I the standard functions of a manufacturer had beendeveloped research and engineering manufacturing sales financeand accounting and a little later human resources (or personnel)

Even more important for its impact on enterprisemdashand on theworld economy in generalmdashwas another management-directeddevelopment that took place at this time That was the applicationof management to manual work in the form of training The childof wartime necessity training has propelled the transformation ofthe world economy in the last forty years because it allows low-wagecountries to do something that traditional economic theory hadsaid could never be done to become efficientmdashand yet still low-wagemdashcompetitors almost overnight

Adam Smith reported that it took several hundred years for acountry or region to develop a tradition of labor and the expertise inmanual and managerial skills needed to produce and market a givenproduct whether cotton textiles or violins

During World War I however large numbers of unskilledpreindustrial people had to be made productive workers in practi-cally no time To meet this need businesses in the United Statesand the United Kingdom began to apply the theory of scientificmanagement developed by Frederick W Taylor between 1885 and1910 to the systematic training of blue-collar workers on a largescale They analyzed tasks and broke them down into individualunskilled operations that could then be learned quite quickly Fur-ther developed in World War II training was then picked up by theJapanese and twenty years later by the South Koreans who madeit the basis for their countriesrsquo phenomenal development

During the 1920s and 1930s management was applied to manymore areas and aspects of the manufacturing business Decentraliza-tion for instance arose to combine the advantages of bigness andthe advantages of smallness within one enterprise Accounting wentfrom ldquobookkeepingrdquo to analysis and control Planning grew out ofthe ldquoGantt chartsrdquo designed in 1917 and 1918 to plan war produc-tion and so did the use of analytical logic and statistics which

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 6

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 7

__ -1__ 0__+1

employ quantification to convert experience and intuition into def-initions information and diagnosis Marketing evolved as a resultof applying management concepts to distribution and sellingMoreover as early as the mid-1920s and early 1930s some Ameri-can management pioneers such as Thomas Watson Sr at thefledgling IBM Robert E Wood at Sears Roebuck and GeorgeElton Mayo at the Harvard Business School began to question theway manufacturing was organized They concluded that the assem-bly line was a short-term compromise Despite its tremendous pro-ductivity it was poor economics because of its inflexibility poor useof human resources even poor engineering They began the think-ing and experimenting that eventually led to ldquoautomationrdquo as theway to organize the manufacturing process and to teamwork qual-ity circles and the information-based organization as the way tomanage human resources Every one of these managerial innova-tions represented the application of knowledge to work the substi-tution of system and information for guesswork brawn and toilEvery one to use Frederick Taylorrsquos term replaced ldquoworkingharderrdquo with ldquoworking smarterrdquo

The powerful effect of these changes became apparent duringWorld War II To the very end the Germans were by far the betterstrategists Having much shorter interior lines they needed fewersupport troops and could match their opponents in combatstrength Yet the Allies wonmdashtheir victory achieved by manage-ment The United States with one-fifth the population of all theother belligerents combined had almost as many men in uniformYet it produced more war materieacutel than all the others takentogether It managed to transport the stuff to fighting fronts as farapart as China Russia India Africa and Western Europe Nowonder then that by the warrsquos end almost all the world hadbecome management-conscious Or that management emerged as arecognizably distinct kind of work one that could be studied anddeveloped into a disciplinemdashas happened in each country that hasenjoyed economic leadership during the postwar period

After World War II we began to see that management is not

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 7

8 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

exclusively business management It pertains to every human effortthat brings together in one organization people of diverse knowl-edge and skills It needs to be applied to all third-sector institutionssuch as hospitals universities churches arts organizations andsocial service agencies which since World War II have grown fasterin the United States than either business or government For eventhough the need to manage volunteers or raise funds may differen-tiate nonprofit managers from their for-profit peers many more oftheir responsibilities are the samemdashamong them defining the rightstrategy and goals developing people measuring performance andmarketing the organizationrsquos services Management worldwide hasbecome the new social function

Management and Entrepreneurship

One important advance in the discipline and practice of manage-ment is that both now embrace entrepreneurship and innovation Asham fight these days pits ldquomanagementrdquo against ldquoentrepreneur-shiprdquo as adversaries if not as mutually exclusive Thatrsquos like sayingthat the fingering hand and the bow hand of the violinist areldquoadversariesrdquo or ldquomutually exclusiverdquo Both are always needed andat the same time And both have to be coordinated and worktogether Any existing organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital goes down fast if it does not innovateConversely any new organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital collapses if it does not manage Not toinnovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing orga-nizations Not to know how to manage is the single largest reasonfor the failure of new ventures

Yet few management books have paid attention to entrepreneur-ship and innovation One reason is that during the period afterWorld War II when most of those books were written managingthe existing rather than innovating the new and different was thedominant task During this period most institutions developed

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 8

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 9

__ -1__ 0__+1

along lines laid down thirty or fifty years earlier This has nowchanged dramatically We have again entered an era of innovationand it is by no means confined to ldquohigh-techrdquo or to technology gen-erally In fact social innovationmdashas this chapter tries to makeclearmdashmay be of greater importance and have much greater impactthan any scientific or technical invention Furthermore we nowhave a ldquodisciplinerdquo of entrepreneurship and innovation (see myInnovation and Entrepreneurship 1986) It is clearly a part of man-agement and rests indeed on well-known and tested managementprinciples It applies to both existing organizations and new ven-tures and to both business and nonbusiness institutions includinggovernment

The Accountabi l i ty of Management

Management books tend to focus on the function of managementinside its organization Few yet accept it as a social function But itis precisely because management has become so pervasive as a socialfunction that it faces its most serious challenge To whom is man-agement accountable And for what On what does managementbase its power What gives it legitimacy

These are not business questions or economic questions Theyare political questions Yet they underlie the most serious assault onmanagement in its historymdasha far more serious assault than anymounted by Marxists or labor unions the hostile takeover AnAmerican phenomenon at first it has spread throughout the non-Communist developed world What made it possible was the emer-gence of the employee pension funds as the controlling shareholdersof publicly owned companies The pension funds while legallyldquoownersrdquo are economically ldquoinvestorsrdquomdashand indeed often ldquospecu-latorsrdquo They have no interest in the enterprise and its welfare Infact in the United States at least they are ldquotrusteesrdquo and are notsupposed to consider anything but immediate pecuniary gainWhat underlies the takeover bid is the postulate that the enterprisersquos

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 9

10 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

sole function is to provide the largest possible immediate gain to theshareholder In the absence of any other justification for managementand enterprise the ldquoraiderrdquo with his hostile takeover bid prevailsmdashand only too often immediately dismantles or loots the going con-cern sacrificing long-range wealth-producing capacity to short-termgains

Managementmdashand not only in the business enterprisemdashhas tobe accountable for performance But how is performance to bedefined How is it to be measured How is it to be enforced And towhom should management be accountable That these questionscan be asked is in itself a measure of the success and importance ofmanagement That they need to be asked is however also anindictment of managers They have not yet faced up to the fact thatthey represent powermdashand power has to be accountable has to belegitimate They have not yet faced up to the fact that they matter

What Is Management

But what is management Is it a bag of techniques and tricks Abundle of analytical tools like those taught in business schoolsThese are important to be sure just as thermometer and anatomyare important to the physician But the evolution and history ofmanagementmdashits successes as well as its problemsmdashteach thatmanagement is above all else based on a very few essential princi-ples To be specific

Management is about human beings Its task is to make peo-ple capable of joint performance to make their strengthseffective and their weaknesses irrelevant This is what organi-zation is all about and it is the reason that management is thecritical determining factor These days practically all of uswork for a managed institution large or small business ornonbusiness We depend on management for our livelihoods

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 10

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 11

__ -1__ 0__+1

And our ability to contribute to society also depends as muchon the management of the organization for which we work asit does on our own skills dedication and effort

Because management deals with the integration of people in acommon venture it is deeply embedded in culture Whatmanagers do in West Germany in the United Kingdom inthe United States in Japan or in Brazil is exactly the sameHow they do it may be quite different Thus one of the basicchallenges managers in a developing country face is to findand identify those parts of their own tradition history andculture that can be used as management building blocks Thedifference between Japanrsquos economic success and Indiarsquos rela-tive backwardness is largely explained by the fact thatJapanese managers were able to plant imported managementconcepts in their own cultural soil and make them grow

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals andshared values Without such commitment there is no enter-prise there is only a mob The enterprise must have simpleclear and unifying objectives The mission of the organiza-tion has to be clear enough and big enough to provide com-mon vision The goals that embody it have to be clear publicand constantly reaffirmed Managementrsquos first job is to thinkthrough set and exemplify those objectives values andgoals

Management must also enable the enterprise and each of itsmembers to grow and develop as needs and opportunitieschange Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institu-tion Training and development must be built into it on alllevelsmdashtraining and development that never stop

Every enterprise is composed of people with different skillsand knowledge doing many different kinds of work It mustbe built on communication and on individual responsibilityAll members need to think through what they aim to accom-plishmdashand make sure that their associates know and under-

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 11

12 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

stand that aim All have to think through what they owe toothersmdashand make sure that others understand All have tothink through what they in turn need from othersmdashandmake sure that others know what is expected of them

Neither the quantity of output nor the ldquobottom linerdquo is byitself an adequate measure of the performance of managementand enterprise Market standing innovation productivitydevelopment of people quality financial resultsmdashall are cru-cial to an organizationrsquos performance and to its survival Non-profit institutions too need measurements in a number ofareas specific to their mission Just as a human being needs adiversity of measures to assess his or her health and perfor-mance an organization needs a diversity of measures to assessits health and performance Performance has to be built intothe enterprise and its management it has to be measuredmdashorat least judgedmdashand it has to be continually improved

Finally the single most important thing to remember aboutany enterprise is that results exist only on the outside Theresult of a business is a satisfied customer The result of a hos-pital is a healed patient The result of a school is a studentwho has learned something and puts it to work ten years laterInside an enterprise there are only costs

Managers who understand these principles and function in theirlight will be achieving accomplished managers

Management as a Libera l Ar t

Thirty years ago the English scientist and novelist C P Snowtalked of the ldquotwo culturesrdquo of contemporary society Managementhowever fits neither Snowrsquos ldquohumanistrdquo nor his ldquoscientistrdquo It dealswith action and application and its test is results This makes it atechnology But management also deals with people their valuestheir growth and developmentmdashand this makes it a humanity So

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 12

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 13

__ -1__ 0__+1

does its concern with and impact on social structure and the com-munity Indeed as everyone has learned who like this author hasbeen working with managers of all kinds of institutions for longyears management is deeply involved in moral concernsmdashthenature of man good and evil

Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal artmdashldquoliberalrdquo because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge self-knowledge wisdom and leadership ldquoartrdquo because it is alsoconcerned with practice and application Managers draw on all theknowledges and insights of the humanities and the social sciencesmdashon psychology and philosophy on economics and history onethicsmdashas well as on the physical sciences But they have to focusthis knowledge on effectiveness and resultsmdashon healing a sickpatient teaching a student building a bridge designing and sellinga ldquouser-friendlyrdquo software program

For these reasons management will increasingly be the disci-pline and the practice through which the ldquohumanitiesrdquo will againacquire recognition impact and relevance

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 13

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 14

__ -1__ 0__+1

II

T H E I N D I V I D U A L

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 15

-1__0__

+1__

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 16

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

c o n t e n t s

Introduction The Origin and Purpose of The Essential Drucker

I m a n a g e m e n t

01 Management as Social Function and Liberal Art0

I I t h e i n d i v i d u a l

13 Effectiveness Must Be Learned

I I I s o c i e t y

23 A Century of Social TransformationmdashEmergence of Knowledge Society

About the AuthorCreditsAbout PerfectBound e-Books

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The Essential Drucker is a selection from my sixty years of workand writing on management It begins with my book The

Future of Industrial Man (1942) and ends (so far at least) with my1999 book Management Challenges for the 21st Century

The Essential Drucker has two purposes First it offers I hope acoherent and fairly comprehensive Introduction to ManagementBut second it gives an Overview of my works on management andthus answers a question that my editors and I have been asked againand again Where do I start to read Drucker Which of his writingsare essential

Atsuo Ueda longtime Japanese friend first conceived TheEssential Drucker He himself has had a distinguished career inJapanese management And having reached the age of sixty herecently started a second career and became the founder and chiefexecutive officer of a new technical university in Tokyo But forthirty years Mr Ueda has also been my Japanese translator and edi-tor He has actually translated many of my books several times asthey went into new Japanese editions He is thus thoroughly famil-iar with my workmdashin fact he knows it better than I do As a result

__ -1__ 0__+1

introduct ion the or ig in and purpose of

T H E E S S E N T I A L D R U C K E R

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page v

he increasingly got invited to conduct Japanese conferences andseminars on my work and found himself being asked over and overagainmdashespecially by younger people both students and executivesat the start of their careersmdashWhere do I start reading Drucker

This led Mr Ueda to reread my entire work to select from itthe most pertinent chapters and to abridge them so that they readas if they had originally been written as one cohesive text Theresult was a three-volume essential Drucker of fifty-seven chap-tersmdashone volume on the management of organizations one vol-ume on the individual in the society of organizations one onsociety in generalmdashwhich was published in Japan in the summerand fall of 2000 and has met with great success It is also beingpublished in Taiwan mainland China and Korea and inArgentina Mexico and Brazil

It is Mr Uedarsquos text that is being used for the US and UKeditions of The Essential Drucker But these editions not only areless than half the size of Mr Uedarsquos original Japanese versionmdashtwenty-six chapters versus the three-volumesrsquo fifty-seven They alsohave a somewhat different focus Cass Canfield Jr at HarperCollinsin the United Statesmdashlongtime friend and my US editor for overthirty yearsmdashalso came to the conclusion a few years ago that therewas need for an introduction to and overview of my sixty years ofmanagement writings But hemdashrightlymdashsaw that the US andUK (and probably altogether the Western) audience for such awork would be both broader and narrower than the audience forthe Japanese venture It would be broader because there is in theWest a growing number of people who while not themselves exec-utives have come to see management as an area of public interestthere are also an increasing number of students in colleges and uni-versities who while not necessarily management students see anunderstanding of management as part of a general education andfinally there are a large and rapidly growing number of mid-careermanagers and professionals who are flocking to advanced-executiveprograms both in universities and in their employing organiza-tions The focus would however also be narrower because these

vi i n t r o d u c t i o n

-1__0__

+1__

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page vi

additional audiences need and want less an introduction to andoverview of Druckerrsquos work than they want a concise comprehen-sive and sharply focused Introduction to Management and tomanagement alone And thus while using Mr Uedarsquos editing andabridging Cass Canfield Jr (with my full indeed my enthusiasticsupport) selected and edited the texts from the Japanese three-volumeedition into a comprehensive cohesive and self-contained intro-duction to managementmdashboth of the management of an enterpriseand of the self-management of the individual whether executive orprofessional within an enterprise and altogether in our society ofmanaged organizations

My readers as well as I owe to both Atsuo Ueda and Cass Can-field Jr an enormous debt of gratitude The two put an incredibleamount of work and dedication into The Essential Drucker And theend product is not only the best introduction to onersquos work anyauthor could possibly have asked for It is also I am convinced atruly unique cohesive and self-contained introduction to manage-ment its basic principles and concerns its problems challengesopportunities

This volume as said before is also an overview of my works onmanagement Readers may therefore want to know where to go inmy books to further pursue this or that topic or this or that area ofparticular interest to them Here therefore are the sources in mybooks for each of twenty-six chapters of the The Essential Drucker

Chapter 1 and 26 are excerpted from The New Realities (1988)Chapters 2 3 5 18 are excerpted from Management Tasks

Responsibilities Practices (1974)Chapters 4 and 19 are excerpted from Managing for the Future

(1992) and were first published in the Harvard Business Review(1989) and in the Wall Street Journal (1988) respectively

Chapters 6 15 and 21 are excerpted from Management Chal-lenges for the 21st Century (1999)

Chapters 7 and 23 are excerpted from Management in a Timeof Great Change (1995) and were first published in the Harvard

i n t r o d u c t i o n vii

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page vii

Business Review (1994) and in the Atlantic Monthly (1996) respec-tively

Chapter 8 was excerpted from The Practice of Management(1954)

Chapter 9 was excerpted from The Frontiers of Management(1986) and was first published in the Harvard Business Review(1985)

Chapters 10 11 12 20 24 were excerpted from Innovation andEntrepreneurship (1985)

Chapters 13 14 16 17 were excerpted from The Effective Exec-utive (1966)

Chapters 22 and 25 were excerpted from Post-Capitalist Society(1993)

All these books are still in print in the United States and inmany other countries

This one-volume edition of The Essential Drucker does nothowever include any excerpts from five important Managementbooks of mine The Future of Industrial Man (1942) Concept of theCorporation (1946) Managing for Results (1964 the first book onwhat is now called ldquostrategyrdquo a term unknown for business fortyyears ago) Managing in Turbulent Times (1980) Managing theNon-Profit Organization (1990) These are important books andstill widely read and used But their subject matter is more special-izedmdashand in some cases also more technicalmdashthan that of thebooks from which the chapters of the present book were chosenmdashand thus had to be left out of a work that calls itself Essential

mdashPeter F DruckerClaremont California

Spring 2001

viii i n t r o d u c t i o n

-1__0__

+1__

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page viii

__ -1__ 0__+1

I

M A N A G E M E N T

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 1

-1__0__

+1__

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 2

When Karl Marx was beginning work on Das Kapital in the1850s the phenomenon of management was unknown So

were the enterprises that managers run The largest manufacturingcompany around was a Manchester cotton mill employing fewerthan three hundred people and owned by Marxrsquos friend and collab-orator Friedrich Engels And in Engelsrsquos millmdashone of the mostprofitable businesses of its daymdashthere were no ldquomanagersrdquo onlyldquocharge handsrdquo who themselves workers enforced discipline over ahandful of fellow ldquoproletariansrdquo

Rarely in human history has any institution emerged as quicklyas management or had as great an impact so fast In less than 150years management has transformed the social and economic fabricof the worldrsquos developed countries It has created a global economyand set new rules for countries that would participate in that econ-omy as equals And it has itself been transformed Few executivesare aware of the tremendous impact management has had Indeed agood many are like M Jourdain the character in Moliegraverersquos Bour-geois Gentilhomme who did not know that he spoke prose Theybarely realize that they practicemdashor mispracticemdashmanagement As

__ -1__ 0__+1

1

management a ssoc ial funct ion and

l iberal art

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 3

4 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

a result they are ill prepared for the tremendous challenges thatnow confront them The truly important problems managers facedo not come from technology or politics they do not originate out-side of management and enterprise They are problems caused bythe very success of management itself

To be sure the fundamental task of management remains thesame to make people capable of joint performance through com-mon goals common values the right structure and the trainingand development they need to perform and to respond to changeBut the very meaning of this task has changed if only because theperformance of management has converted the workforce from onecomposed largely of unskilled laborers to one of highly educatedknowledge workers

The Orig ins and Deve lopment of Management

On the threshold of World War I a few thinkers were just becom-ing aware of managementrsquos existence But few people even in themost advanced countries had anything to do with it Now the largestsingle group in the labor force more than one-third of the total arepeople whom the US Bureau of the Census calls ldquomanagerial andprofessionalrdquo Management has been the main agent of this trans-formation Management explains why for the first time in humanhistory we can employ large numbers of knowledgeable skilledpeople in productive work No earlier society could do thisIndeed no earlier society could support more than a handful ofsuch people Until quite recently no one knew how to put peoplewith different skills and knowledge together to achieve commongoals

Eighteenth-century China was the envy of contemporary West-ern intellectuals because it supplied more jobs for educated peoplethan all of Europe didmdashsome twenty thousand per year Today theUnited States with about the same population China then hadgraduates nearly a million college students a year few of whom have

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 4

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 5

__ -1__ 0__+1

the slightest difficulty finding well-paid employment Managementenables us to employ them

Knowledge especially advanced knowledge is always special-ized By itself it produces nothing Yet a modern business and notonly the largest ones may employ up to ten thousand highly knowl-edgeable people who represent up to sixty different knowledge areasEngineers of all sorts designers marketing experts economistsstatisticians psychologists planners accountants human-resourcespeoplemdashall working together in a joint venture None would beeffective without the managed enterprise

There is no point in asking which came first the educationalexplosion of the last one hundred years or the management that putthis knowledge to productive use Modern management and mod-ern enterprise could not exist without the knowledge base thatdeveloped societies have built But equally it is management andmanagement alone that makes effective all this knowledge andthese knowledgeable people The emergence of management hasconverted knowledge from social ornament and luxury into the truecapital of any economy

Not many business leaders could have predicted this develop-ment back in 1870 when large enterprises were first beginning totake shape The reason was not so much lack of foresight as lack ofprecedent At that time the only large permanent organizationaround was the army Not surprisingly therefore its command-and-control structure became the model for the men who wereputting together transcontinental railroads steel mills modernbanks and department stores The command model with a veryfew at the top giving orders and a great many at the bottom obeyingthem remained the norm for nearly one hundred years But it wasnever as static as its longevity might suggest On the contrary itbegan to change almost at once as specialized knowledge of all sortspoured into enterprise

The first university-trained engineer in manufacturing industrywas hired by Siemens in Germany in 1867mdashhis name wasFriedrich von Hefner-Alteneck Within five years he had built a

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 5

6 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

research department Other specialized departments followed suitBy World War I the standard functions of a manufacturer had beendeveloped research and engineering manufacturing sales financeand accounting and a little later human resources (or personnel)

Even more important for its impact on enterprisemdashand on theworld economy in generalmdashwas another management-directeddevelopment that took place at this time That was the applicationof management to manual work in the form of training The childof wartime necessity training has propelled the transformation ofthe world economy in the last forty years because it allows low-wagecountries to do something that traditional economic theory hadsaid could never be done to become efficientmdashand yet still low-wagemdashcompetitors almost overnight

Adam Smith reported that it took several hundred years for acountry or region to develop a tradition of labor and the expertise inmanual and managerial skills needed to produce and market a givenproduct whether cotton textiles or violins

During World War I however large numbers of unskilledpreindustrial people had to be made productive workers in practi-cally no time To meet this need businesses in the United Statesand the United Kingdom began to apply the theory of scientificmanagement developed by Frederick W Taylor between 1885 and1910 to the systematic training of blue-collar workers on a largescale They analyzed tasks and broke them down into individualunskilled operations that could then be learned quite quickly Fur-ther developed in World War II training was then picked up by theJapanese and twenty years later by the South Koreans who madeit the basis for their countriesrsquo phenomenal development

During the 1920s and 1930s management was applied to manymore areas and aspects of the manufacturing business Decentraliza-tion for instance arose to combine the advantages of bigness andthe advantages of smallness within one enterprise Accounting wentfrom ldquobookkeepingrdquo to analysis and control Planning grew out ofthe ldquoGantt chartsrdquo designed in 1917 and 1918 to plan war produc-tion and so did the use of analytical logic and statistics which

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 6

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 7

__ -1__ 0__+1

employ quantification to convert experience and intuition into def-initions information and diagnosis Marketing evolved as a resultof applying management concepts to distribution and sellingMoreover as early as the mid-1920s and early 1930s some Ameri-can management pioneers such as Thomas Watson Sr at thefledgling IBM Robert E Wood at Sears Roebuck and GeorgeElton Mayo at the Harvard Business School began to question theway manufacturing was organized They concluded that the assem-bly line was a short-term compromise Despite its tremendous pro-ductivity it was poor economics because of its inflexibility poor useof human resources even poor engineering They began the think-ing and experimenting that eventually led to ldquoautomationrdquo as theway to organize the manufacturing process and to teamwork qual-ity circles and the information-based organization as the way tomanage human resources Every one of these managerial innova-tions represented the application of knowledge to work the substi-tution of system and information for guesswork brawn and toilEvery one to use Frederick Taylorrsquos term replaced ldquoworkingharderrdquo with ldquoworking smarterrdquo

The powerful effect of these changes became apparent duringWorld War II To the very end the Germans were by far the betterstrategists Having much shorter interior lines they needed fewersupport troops and could match their opponents in combatstrength Yet the Allies wonmdashtheir victory achieved by manage-ment The United States with one-fifth the population of all theother belligerents combined had almost as many men in uniformYet it produced more war materieacutel than all the others takentogether It managed to transport the stuff to fighting fronts as farapart as China Russia India Africa and Western Europe Nowonder then that by the warrsquos end almost all the world hadbecome management-conscious Or that management emerged as arecognizably distinct kind of work one that could be studied anddeveloped into a disciplinemdashas happened in each country that hasenjoyed economic leadership during the postwar period

After World War II we began to see that management is not

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 7

8 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

exclusively business management It pertains to every human effortthat brings together in one organization people of diverse knowl-edge and skills It needs to be applied to all third-sector institutionssuch as hospitals universities churches arts organizations andsocial service agencies which since World War II have grown fasterin the United States than either business or government For eventhough the need to manage volunteers or raise funds may differen-tiate nonprofit managers from their for-profit peers many more oftheir responsibilities are the samemdashamong them defining the rightstrategy and goals developing people measuring performance andmarketing the organizationrsquos services Management worldwide hasbecome the new social function

Management and Entrepreneurship

One important advance in the discipline and practice of manage-ment is that both now embrace entrepreneurship and innovation Asham fight these days pits ldquomanagementrdquo against ldquoentrepreneur-shiprdquo as adversaries if not as mutually exclusive Thatrsquos like sayingthat the fingering hand and the bow hand of the violinist areldquoadversariesrdquo or ldquomutually exclusiverdquo Both are always needed andat the same time And both have to be coordinated and worktogether Any existing organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital goes down fast if it does not innovateConversely any new organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital collapses if it does not manage Not toinnovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing orga-nizations Not to know how to manage is the single largest reasonfor the failure of new ventures

Yet few management books have paid attention to entrepreneur-ship and innovation One reason is that during the period afterWorld War II when most of those books were written managingthe existing rather than innovating the new and different was thedominant task During this period most institutions developed

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 8

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 9

__ -1__ 0__+1

along lines laid down thirty or fifty years earlier This has nowchanged dramatically We have again entered an era of innovationand it is by no means confined to ldquohigh-techrdquo or to technology gen-erally In fact social innovationmdashas this chapter tries to makeclearmdashmay be of greater importance and have much greater impactthan any scientific or technical invention Furthermore we nowhave a ldquodisciplinerdquo of entrepreneurship and innovation (see myInnovation and Entrepreneurship 1986) It is clearly a part of man-agement and rests indeed on well-known and tested managementprinciples It applies to both existing organizations and new ven-tures and to both business and nonbusiness institutions includinggovernment

The Accountabi l i ty of Management

Management books tend to focus on the function of managementinside its organization Few yet accept it as a social function But itis precisely because management has become so pervasive as a socialfunction that it faces its most serious challenge To whom is man-agement accountable And for what On what does managementbase its power What gives it legitimacy

These are not business questions or economic questions Theyare political questions Yet they underlie the most serious assault onmanagement in its historymdasha far more serious assault than anymounted by Marxists or labor unions the hostile takeover AnAmerican phenomenon at first it has spread throughout the non-Communist developed world What made it possible was the emer-gence of the employee pension funds as the controlling shareholdersof publicly owned companies The pension funds while legallyldquoownersrdquo are economically ldquoinvestorsrdquomdashand indeed often ldquospecu-latorsrdquo They have no interest in the enterprise and its welfare Infact in the United States at least they are ldquotrusteesrdquo and are notsupposed to consider anything but immediate pecuniary gainWhat underlies the takeover bid is the postulate that the enterprisersquos

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 9

10 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

sole function is to provide the largest possible immediate gain to theshareholder In the absence of any other justification for managementand enterprise the ldquoraiderrdquo with his hostile takeover bid prevailsmdashand only too often immediately dismantles or loots the going con-cern sacrificing long-range wealth-producing capacity to short-termgains

Managementmdashand not only in the business enterprisemdashhas tobe accountable for performance But how is performance to bedefined How is it to be measured How is it to be enforced And towhom should management be accountable That these questionscan be asked is in itself a measure of the success and importance ofmanagement That they need to be asked is however also anindictment of managers They have not yet faced up to the fact thatthey represent powermdashand power has to be accountable has to belegitimate They have not yet faced up to the fact that they matter

What Is Management

But what is management Is it a bag of techniques and tricks Abundle of analytical tools like those taught in business schoolsThese are important to be sure just as thermometer and anatomyare important to the physician But the evolution and history ofmanagementmdashits successes as well as its problemsmdashteach thatmanagement is above all else based on a very few essential princi-ples To be specific

Management is about human beings Its task is to make peo-ple capable of joint performance to make their strengthseffective and their weaknesses irrelevant This is what organi-zation is all about and it is the reason that management is thecritical determining factor These days practically all of uswork for a managed institution large or small business ornonbusiness We depend on management for our livelihoods

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 10

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 11

__ -1__ 0__+1

And our ability to contribute to society also depends as muchon the management of the organization for which we work asit does on our own skills dedication and effort

Because management deals with the integration of people in acommon venture it is deeply embedded in culture Whatmanagers do in West Germany in the United Kingdom inthe United States in Japan or in Brazil is exactly the sameHow they do it may be quite different Thus one of the basicchallenges managers in a developing country face is to findand identify those parts of their own tradition history andculture that can be used as management building blocks Thedifference between Japanrsquos economic success and Indiarsquos rela-tive backwardness is largely explained by the fact thatJapanese managers were able to plant imported managementconcepts in their own cultural soil and make them grow

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals andshared values Without such commitment there is no enter-prise there is only a mob The enterprise must have simpleclear and unifying objectives The mission of the organiza-tion has to be clear enough and big enough to provide com-mon vision The goals that embody it have to be clear publicand constantly reaffirmed Managementrsquos first job is to thinkthrough set and exemplify those objectives values andgoals

Management must also enable the enterprise and each of itsmembers to grow and develop as needs and opportunitieschange Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institu-tion Training and development must be built into it on alllevelsmdashtraining and development that never stop

Every enterprise is composed of people with different skillsand knowledge doing many different kinds of work It mustbe built on communication and on individual responsibilityAll members need to think through what they aim to accom-plishmdashand make sure that their associates know and under-

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 11

12 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

stand that aim All have to think through what they owe toothersmdashand make sure that others understand All have tothink through what they in turn need from othersmdashandmake sure that others know what is expected of them

Neither the quantity of output nor the ldquobottom linerdquo is byitself an adequate measure of the performance of managementand enterprise Market standing innovation productivitydevelopment of people quality financial resultsmdashall are cru-cial to an organizationrsquos performance and to its survival Non-profit institutions too need measurements in a number ofareas specific to their mission Just as a human being needs adiversity of measures to assess his or her health and perfor-mance an organization needs a diversity of measures to assessits health and performance Performance has to be built intothe enterprise and its management it has to be measuredmdashorat least judgedmdashand it has to be continually improved

Finally the single most important thing to remember aboutany enterprise is that results exist only on the outside Theresult of a business is a satisfied customer The result of a hos-pital is a healed patient The result of a school is a studentwho has learned something and puts it to work ten years laterInside an enterprise there are only costs

Managers who understand these principles and function in theirlight will be achieving accomplished managers

Management as a Libera l Ar t

Thirty years ago the English scientist and novelist C P Snowtalked of the ldquotwo culturesrdquo of contemporary society Managementhowever fits neither Snowrsquos ldquohumanistrdquo nor his ldquoscientistrdquo It dealswith action and application and its test is results This makes it atechnology But management also deals with people their valuestheir growth and developmentmdashand this makes it a humanity So

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 12

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 13

__ -1__ 0__+1

does its concern with and impact on social structure and the com-munity Indeed as everyone has learned who like this author hasbeen working with managers of all kinds of institutions for longyears management is deeply involved in moral concernsmdashthenature of man good and evil

Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal artmdashldquoliberalrdquo because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge self-knowledge wisdom and leadership ldquoartrdquo because it is alsoconcerned with practice and application Managers draw on all theknowledges and insights of the humanities and the social sciencesmdashon psychology and philosophy on economics and history onethicsmdashas well as on the physical sciences But they have to focusthis knowledge on effectiveness and resultsmdashon healing a sickpatient teaching a student building a bridge designing and sellinga ldquouser-friendlyrdquo software program

For these reasons management will increasingly be the disci-pline and the practice through which the ldquohumanitiesrdquo will againacquire recognition impact and relevance

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 13

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 14

__ -1__ 0__+1

II

T H E I N D I V I D U A L

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 15

-1__0__

+1__

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 16

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

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The Essential Drucker is a selection from my sixty years of workand writing on management It begins with my book The

Future of Industrial Man (1942) and ends (so far at least) with my1999 book Management Challenges for the 21st Century

The Essential Drucker has two purposes First it offers I hope acoherent and fairly comprehensive Introduction to ManagementBut second it gives an Overview of my works on management andthus answers a question that my editors and I have been asked againand again Where do I start to read Drucker Which of his writingsare essential

Atsuo Ueda longtime Japanese friend first conceived TheEssential Drucker He himself has had a distinguished career inJapanese management And having reached the age of sixty herecently started a second career and became the founder and chiefexecutive officer of a new technical university in Tokyo But forthirty years Mr Ueda has also been my Japanese translator and edi-tor He has actually translated many of my books several times asthey went into new Japanese editions He is thus thoroughly famil-iar with my workmdashin fact he knows it better than I do As a result

__ -1__ 0__+1

introduct ion the or ig in and purpose of

T H E E S S E N T I A L D R U C K E R

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page v

he increasingly got invited to conduct Japanese conferences andseminars on my work and found himself being asked over and overagainmdashespecially by younger people both students and executivesat the start of their careersmdashWhere do I start reading Drucker

This led Mr Ueda to reread my entire work to select from itthe most pertinent chapters and to abridge them so that they readas if they had originally been written as one cohesive text Theresult was a three-volume essential Drucker of fifty-seven chap-tersmdashone volume on the management of organizations one vol-ume on the individual in the society of organizations one onsociety in generalmdashwhich was published in Japan in the summerand fall of 2000 and has met with great success It is also beingpublished in Taiwan mainland China and Korea and inArgentina Mexico and Brazil

It is Mr Uedarsquos text that is being used for the US and UKeditions of The Essential Drucker But these editions not only areless than half the size of Mr Uedarsquos original Japanese versionmdashtwenty-six chapters versus the three-volumesrsquo fifty-seven They alsohave a somewhat different focus Cass Canfield Jr at HarperCollinsin the United Statesmdashlongtime friend and my US editor for overthirty yearsmdashalso came to the conclusion a few years ago that therewas need for an introduction to and overview of my sixty years ofmanagement writings But hemdashrightlymdashsaw that the US andUK (and probably altogether the Western) audience for such awork would be both broader and narrower than the audience forthe Japanese venture It would be broader because there is in theWest a growing number of people who while not themselves exec-utives have come to see management as an area of public interestthere are also an increasing number of students in colleges and uni-versities who while not necessarily management students see anunderstanding of management as part of a general education andfinally there are a large and rapidly growing number of mid-careermanagers and professionals who are flocking to advanced-executiveprograms both in universities and in their employing organiza-tions The focus would however also be narrower because these

vi i n t r o d u c t i o n

-1__0__

+1__

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page vi

additional audiences need and want less an introduction to andoverview of Druckerrsquos work than they want a concise comprehen-sive and sharply focused Introduction to Management and tomanagement alone And thus while using Mr Uedarsquos editing andabridging Cass Canfield Jr (with my full indeed my enthusiasticsupport) selected and edited the texts from the Japanese three-volumeedition into a comprehensive cohesive and self-contained intro-duction to managementmdashboth of the management of an enterpriseand of the self-management of the individual whether executive orprofessional within an enterprise and altogether in our society ofmanaged organizations

My readers as well as I owe to both Atsuo Ueda and Cass Can-field Jr an enormous debt of gratitude The two put an incredibleamount of work and dedication into The Essential Drucker And theend product is not only the best introduction to onersquos work anyauthor could possibly have asked for It is also I am convinced atruly unique cohesive and self-contained introduction to manage-ment its basic principles and concerns its problems challengesopportunities

This volume as said before is also an overview of my works onmanagement Readers may therefore want to know where to go inmy books to further pursue this or that topic or this or that area ofparticular interest to them Here therefore are the sources in mybooks for each of twenty-six chapters of the The Essential Drucker

Chapter 1 and 26 are excerpted from The New Realities (1988)Chapters 2 3 5 18 are excerpted from Management Tasks

Responsibilities Practices (1974)Chapters 4 and 19 are excerpted from Managing for the Future

(1992) and were first published in the Harvard Business Review(1989) and in the Wall Street Journal (1988) respectively

Chapters 6 15 and 21 are excerpted from Management Chal-lenges for the 21st Century (1999)

Chapters 7 and 23 are excerpted from Management in a Timeof Great Change (1995) and were first published in the Harvard

i n t r o d u c t i o n vii

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page vii

Business Review (1994) and in the Atlantic Monthly (1996) respec-tively

Chapter 8 was excerpted from The Practice of Management(1954)

Chapter 9 was excerpted from The Frontiers of Management(1986) and was first published in the Harvard Business Review(1985)

Chapters 10 11 12 20 24 were excerpted from Innovation andEntrepreneurship (1985)

Chapters 13 14 16 17 were excerpted from The Effective Exec-utive (1966)

Chapters 22 and 25 were excerpted from Post-Capitalist Society(1993)

All these books are still in print in the United States and inmany other countries

This one-volume edition of The Essential Drucker does nothowever include any excerpts from five important Managementbooks of mine The Future of Industrial Man (1942) Concept of theCorporation (1946) Managing for Results (1964 the first book onwhat is now called ldquostrategyrdquo a term unknown for business fortyyears ago) Managing in Turbulent Times (1980) Managing theNon-Profit Organization (1990) These are important books andstill widely read and used But their subject matter is more special-izedmdashand in some cases also more technicalmdashthan that of thebooks from which the chapters of the present book were chosenmdashand thus had to be left out of a work that calls itself Essential

mdashPeter F DruckerClaremont California

Spring 2001

viii i n t r o d u c t i o n

-1__0__

+1__

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page viii

__ -1__ 0__+1

I

M A N A G E M E N T

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 1

-1__0__

+1__

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 2

When Karl Marx was beginning work on Das Kapital in the1850s the phenomenon of management was unknown So

were the enterprises that managers run The largest manufacturingcompany around was a Manchester cotton mill employing fewerthan three hundred people and owned by Marxrsquos friend and collab-orator Friedrich Engels And in Engelsrsquos millmdashone of the mostprofitable businesses of its daymdashthere were no ldquomanagersrdquo onlyldquocharge handsrdquo who themselves workers enforced discipline over ahandful of fellow ldquoproletariansrdquo

Rarely in human history has any institution emerged as quicklyas management or had as great an impact so fast In less than 150years management has transformed the social and economic fabricof the worldrsquos developed countries It has created a global economyand set new rules for countries that would participate in that econ-omy as equals And it has itself been transformed Few executivesare aware of the tremendous impact management has had Indeed agood many are like M Jourdain the character in Moliegraverersquos Bour-geois Gentilhomme who did not know that he spoke prose Theybarely realize that they practicemdashor mispracticemdashmanagement As

__ -1__ 0__+1

1

management a ssoc ial funct ion and

l iberal art

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 3

4 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

a result they are ill prepared for the tremendous challenges thatnow confront them The truly important problems managers facedo not come from technology or politics they do not originate out-side of management and enterprise They are problems caused bythe very success of management itself

To be sure the fundamental task of management remains thesame to make people capable of joint performance through com-mon goals common values the right structure and the trainingand development they need to perform and to respond to changeBut the very meaning of this task has changed if only because theperformance of management has converted the workforce from onecomposed largely of unskilled laborers to one of highly educatedknowledge workers

The Orig ins and Deve lopment of Management

On the threshold of World War I a few thinkers were just becom-ing aware of managementrsquos existence But few people even in themost advanced countries had anything to do with it Now the largestsingle group in the labor force more than one-third of the total arepeople whom the US Bureau of the Census calls ldquomanagerial andprofessionalrdquo Management has been the main agent of this trans-formation Management explains why for the first time in humanhistory we can employ large numbers of knowledgeable skilledpeople in productive work No earlier society could do thisIndeed no earlier society could support more than a handful ofsuch people Until quite recently no one knew how to put peoplewith different skills and knowledge together to achieve commongoals

Eighteenth-century China was the envy of contemporary West-ern intellectuals because it supplied more jobs for educated peoplethan all of Europe didmdashsome twenty thousand per year Today theUnited States with about the same population China then hadgraduates nearly a million college students a year few of whom have

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 4

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 5

__ -1__ 0__+1

the slightest difficulty finding well-paid employment Managementenables us to employ them

Knowledge especially advanced knowledge is always special-ized By itself it produces nothing Yet a modern business and notonly the largest ones may employ up to ten thousand highly knowl-edgeable people who represent up to sixty different knowledge areasEngineers of all sorts designers marketing experts economistsstatisticians psychologists planners accountants human-resourcespeoplemdashall working together in a joint venture None would beeffective without the managed enterprise

There is no point in asking which came first the educationalexplosion of the last one hundred years or the management that putthis knowledge to productive use Modern management and mod-ern enterprise could not exist without the knowledge base thatdeveloped societies have built But equally it is management andmanagement alone that makes effective all this knowledge andthese knowledgeable people The emergence of management hasconverted knowledge from social ornament and luxury into the truecapital of any economy

Not many business leaders could have predicted this develop-ment back in 1870 when large enterprises were first beginning totake shape The reason was not so much lack of foresight as lack ofprecedent At that time the only large permanent organizationaround was the army Not surprisingly therefore its command-and-control structure became the model for the men who wereputting together transcontinental railroads steel mills modernbanks and department stores The command model with a veryfew at the top giving orders and a great many at the bottom obeyingthem remained the norm for nearly one hundred years But it wasnever as static as its longevity might suggest On the contrary itbegan to change almost at once as specialized knowledge of all sortspoured into enterprise

The first university-trained engineer in manufacturing industrywas hired by Siemens in Germany in 1867mdashhis name wasFriedrich von Hefner-Alteneck Within five years he had built a

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 5

6 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

research department Other specialized departments followed suitBy World War I the standard functions of a manufacturer had beendeveloped research and engineering manufacturing sales financeand accounting and a little later human resources (or personnel)

Even more important for its impact on enterprisemdashand on theworld economy in generalmdashwas another management-directeddevelopment that took place at this time That was the applicationof management to manual work in the form of training The childof wartime necessity training has propelled the transformation ofthe world economy in the last forty years because it allows low-wagecountries to do something that traditional economic theory hadsaid could never be done to become efficientmdashand yet still low-wagemdashcompetitors almost overnight

Adam Smith reported that it took several hundred years for acountry or region to develop a tradition of labor and the expertise inmanual and managerial skills needed to produce and market a givenproduct whether cotton textiles or violins

During World War I however large numbers of unskilledpreindustrial people had to be made productive workers in practi-cally no time To meet this need businesses in the United Statesand the United Kingdom began to apply the theory of scientificmanagement developed by Frederick W Taylor between 1885 and1910 to the systematic training of blue-collar workers on a largescale They analyzed tasks and broke them down into individualunskilled operations that could then be learned quite quickly Fur-ther developed in World War II training was then picked up by theJapanese and twenty years later by the South Koreans who madeit the basis for their countriesrsquo phenomenal development

During the 1920s and 1930s management was applied to manymore areas and aspects of the manufacturing business Decentraliza-tion for instance arose to combine the advantages of bigness andthe advantages of smallness within one enterprise Accounting wentfrom ldquobookkeepingrdquo to analysis and control Planning grew out ofthe ldquoGantt chartsrdquo designed in 1917 and 1918 to plan war produc-tion and so did the use of analytical logic and statistics which

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 6

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 7

__ -1__ 0__+1

employ quantification to convert experience and intuition into def-initions information and diagnosis Marketing evolved as a resultof applying management concepts to distribution and sellingMoreover as early as the mid-1920s and early 1930s some Ameri-can management pioneers such as Thomas Watson Sr at thefledgling IBM Robert E Wood at Sears Roebuck and GeorgeElton Mayo at the Harvard Business School began to question theway manufacturing was organized They concluded that the assem-bly line was a short-term compromise Despite its tremendous pro-ductivity it was poor economics because of its inflexibility poor useof human resources even poor engineering They began the think-ing and experimenting that eventually led to ldquoautomationrdquo as theway to organize the manufacturing process and to teamwork qual-ity circles and the information-based organization as the way tomanage human resources Every one of these managerial innova-tions represented the application of knowledge to work the substi-tution of system and information for guesswork brawn and toilEvery one to use Frederick Taylorrsquos term replaced ldquoworkingharderrdquo with ldquoworking smarterrdquo

The powerful effect of these changes became apparent duringWorld War II To the very end the Germans were by far the betterstrategists Having much shorter interior lines they needed fewersupport troops and could match their opponents in combatstrength Yet the Allies wonmdashtheir victory achieved by manage-ment The United States with one-fifth the population of all theother belligerents combined had almost as many men in uniformYet it produced more war materieacutel than all the others takentogether It managed to transport the stuff to fighting fronts as farapart as China Russia India Africa and Western Europe Nowonder then that by the warrsquos end almost all the world hadbecome management-conscious Or that management emerged as arecognizably distinct kind of work one that could be studied anddeveloped into a disciplinemdashas happened in each country that hasenjoyed economic leadership during the postwar period

After World War II we began to see that management is not

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 7

8 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

exclusively business management It pertains to every human effortthat brings together in one organization people of diverse knowl-edge and skills It needs to be applied to all third-sector institutionssuch as hospitals universities churches arts organizations andsocial service agencies which since World War II have grown fasterin the United States than either business or government For eventhough the need to manage volunteers or raise funds may differen-tiate nonprofit managers from their for-profit peers many more oftheir responsibilities are the samemdashamong them defining the rightstrategy and goals developing people measuring performance andmarketing the organizationrsquos services Management worldwide hasbecome the new social function

Management and Entrepreneurship

One important advance in the discipline and practice of manage-ment is that both now embrace entrepreneurship and innovation Asham fight these days pits ldquomanagementrdquo against ldquoentrepreneur-shiprdquo as adversaries if not as mutually exclusive Thatrsquos like sayingthat the fingering hand and the bow hand of the violinist areldquoadversariesrdquo or ldquomutually exclusiverdquo Both are always needed andat the same time And both have to be coordinated and worktogether Any existing organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital goes down fast if it does not innovateConversely any new organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital collapses if it does not manage Not toinnovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing orga-nizations Not to know how to manage is the single largest reasonfor the failure of new ventures

Yet few management books have paid attention to entrepreneur-ship and innovation One reason is that during the period afterWorld War II when most of those books were written managingthe existing rather than innovating the new and different was thedominant task During this period most institutions developed

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 8

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 9

__ -1__ 0__+1

along lines laid down thirty or fifty years earlier This has nowchanged dramatically We have again entered an era of innovationand it is by no means confined to ldquohigh-techrdquo or to technology gen-erally In fact social innovationmdashas this chapter tries to makeclearmdashmay be of greater importance and have much greater impactthan any scientific or technical invention Furthermore we nowhave a ldquodisciplinerdquo of entrepreneurship and innovation (see myInnovation and Entrepreneurship 1986) It is clearly a part of man-agement and rests indeed on well-known and tested managementprinciples It applies to both existing organizations and new ven-tures and to both business and nonbusiness institutions includinggovernment

The Accountabi l i ty of Management

Management books tend to focus on the function of managementinside its organization Few yet accept it as a social function But itis precisely because management has become so pervasive as a socialfunction that it faces its most serious challenge To whom is man-agement accountable And for what On what does managementbase its power What gives it legitimacy

These are not business questions or economic questions Theyare political questions Yet they underlie the most serious assault onmanagement in its historymdasha far more serious assault than anymounted by Marxists or labor unions the hostile takeover AnAmerican phenomenon at first it has spread throughout the non-Communist developed world What made it possible was the emer-gence of the employee pension funds as the controlling shareholdersof publicly owned companies The pension funds while legallyldquoownersrdquo are economically ldquoinvestorsrdquomdashand indeed often ldquospecu-latorsrdquo They have no interest in the enterprise and its welfare Infact in the United States at least they are ldquotrusteesrdquo and are notsupposed to consider anything but immediate pecuniary gainWhat underlies the takeover bid is the postulate that the enterprisersquos

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 9

10 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

sole function is to provide the largest possible immediate gain to theshareholder In the absence of any other justification for managementand enterprise the ldquoraiderrdquo with his hostile takeover bid prevailsmdashand only too often immediately dismantles or loots the going con-cern sacrificing long-range wealth-producing capacity to short-termgains

Managementmdashand not only in the business enterprisemdashhas tobe accountable for performance But how is performance to bedefined How is it to be measured How is it to be enforced And towhom should management be accountable That these questionscan be asked is in itself a measure of the success and importance ofmanagement That they need to be asked is however also anindictment of managers They have not yet faced up to the fact thatthey represent powermdashand power has to be accountable has to belegitimate They have not yet faced up to the fact that they matter

What Is Management

But what is management Is it a bag of techniques and tricks Abundle of analytical tools like those taught in business schoolsThese are important to be sure just as thermometer and anatomyare important to the physician But the evolution and history ofmanagementmdashits successes as well as its problemsmdashteach thatmanagement is above all else based on a very few essential princi-ples To be specific

Management is about human beings Its task is to make peo-ple capable of joint performance to make their strengthseffective and their weaknesses irrelevant This is what organi-zation is all about and it is the reason that management is thecritical determining factor These days practically all of uswork for a managed institution large or small business ornonbusiness We depend on management for our livelihoods

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 10

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 11

__ -1__ 0__+1

And our ability to contribute to society also depends as muchon the management of the organization for which we work asit does on our own skills dedication and effort

Because management deals with the integration of people in acommon venture it is deeply embedded in culture Whatmanagers do in West Germany in the United Kingdom inthe United States in Japan or in Brazil is exactly the sameHow they do it may be quite different Thus one of the basicchallenges managers in a developing country face is to findand identify those parts of their own tradition history andculture that can be used as management building blocks Thedifference between Japanrsquos economic success and Indiarsquos rela-tive backwardness is largely explained by the fact thatJapanese managers were able to plant imported managementconcepts in their own cultural soil and make them grow

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals andshared values Without such commitment there is no enter-prise there is only a mob The enterprise must have simpleclear and unifying objectives The mission of the organiza-tion has to be clear enough and big enough to provide com-mon vision The goals that embody it have to be clear publicand constantly reaffirmed Managementrsquos first job is to thinkthrough set and exemplify those objectives values andgoals

Management must also enable the enterprise and each of itsmembers to grow and develop as needs and opportunitieschange Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institu-tion Training and development must be built into it on alllevelsmdashtraining and development that never stop

Every enterprise is composed of people with different skillsand knowledge doing many different kinds of work It mustbe built on communication and on individual responsibilityAll members need to think through what they aim to accom-plishmdashand make sure that their associates know and under-

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 11

12 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

stand that aim All have to think through what they owe toothersmdashand make sure that others understand All have tothink through what they in turn need from othersmdashandmake sure that others know what is expected of them

Neither the quantity of output nor the ldquobottom linerdquo is byitself an adequate measure of the performance of managementand enterprise Market standing innovation productivitydevelopment of people quality financial resultsmdashall are cru-cial to an organizationrsquos performance and to its survival Non-profit institutions too need measurements in a number ofareas specific to their mission Just as a human being needs adiversity of measures to assess his or her health and perfor-mance an organization needs a diversity of measures to assessits health and performance Performance has to be built intothe enterprise and its management it has to be measuredmdashorat least judgedmdashand it has to be continually improved

Finally the single most important thing to remember aboutany enterprise is that results exist only on the outside Theresult of a business is a satisfied customer The result of a hos-pital is a healed patient The result of a school is a studentwho has learned something and puts it to work ten years laterInside an enterprise there are only costs

Managers who understand these principles and function in theirlight will be achieving accomplished managers

Management as a Libera l Ar t

Thirty years ago the English scientist and novelist C P Snowtalked of the ldquotwo culturesrdquo of contemporary society Managementhowever fits neither Snowrsquos ldquohumanistrdquo nor his ldquoscientistrdquo It dealswith action and application and its test is results This makes it atechnology But management also deals with people their valuestheir growth and developmentmdashand this makes it a humanity So

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 12

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 13

__ -1__ 0__+1

does its concern with and impact on social structure and the com-munity Indeed as everyone has learned who like this author hasbeen working with managers of all kinds of institutions for longyears management is deeply involved in moral concernsmdashthenature of man good and evil

Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal artmdashldquoliberalrdquo because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge self-knowledge wisdom and leadership ldquoartrdquo because it is alsoconcerned with practice and application Managers draw on all theknowledges and insights of the humanities and the social sciencesmdashon psychology and philosophy on economics and history onethicsmdashas well as on the physical sciences But they have to focusthis knowledge on effectiveness and resultsmdashon healing a sickpatient teaching a student building a bridge designing and sellinga ldquouser-friendlyrdquo software program

For these reasons management will increasingly be the disci-pline and the practice through which the ldquohumanitiesrdquo will againacquire recognition impact and relevance

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 13

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 14

__ -1__ 0__+1

II

T H E I N D I V I D U A L

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 15

-1__0__

+1__

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 16

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

The Essential Drucker is a selection from my sixty years of workand writing on management It begins with my book The

Future of Industrial Man (1942) and ends (so far at least) with my1999 book Management Challenges for the 21st Century

The Essential Drucker has two purposes First it offers I hope acoherent and fairly comprehensive Introduction to ManagementBut second it gives an Overview of my works on management andthus answers a question that my editors and I have been asked againand again Where do I start to read Drucker Which of his writingsare essential

Atsuo Ueda longtime Japanese friend first conceived TheEssential Drucker He himself has had a distinguished career inJapanese management And having reached the age of sixty herecently started a second career and became the founder and chiefexecutive officer of a new technical university in Tokyo But forthirty years Mr Ueda has also been my Japanese translator and edi-tor He has actually translated many of my books several times asthey went into new Japanese editions He is thus thoroughly famil-iar with my workmdashin fact he knows it better than I do As a result

__ -1__ 0__+1

introduct ion the or ig in and purpose of

T H E E S S E N T I A L D R U C K E R

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page v

he increasingly got invited to conduct Japanese conferences andseminars on my work and found himself being asked over and overagainmdashespecially by younger people both students and executivesat the start of their careersmdashWhere do I start reading Drucker

This led Mr Ueda to reread my entire work to select from itthe most pertinent chapters and to abridge them so that they readas if they had originally been written as one cohesive text Theresult was a three-volume essential Drucker of fifty-seven chap-tersmdashone volume on the management of organizations one vol-ume on the individual in the society of organizations one onsociety in generalmdashwhich was published in Japan in the summerand fall of 2000 and has met with great success It is also beingpublished in Taiwan mainland China and Korea and inArgentina Mexico and Brazil

It is Mr Uedarsquos text that is being used for the US and UKeditions of The Essential Drucker But these editions not only areless than half the size of Mr Uedarsquos original Japanese versionmdashtwenty-six chapters versus the three-volumesrsquo fifty-seven They alsohave a somewhat different focus Cass Canfield Jr at HarperCollinsin the United Statesmdashlongtime friend and my US editor for overthirty yearsmdashalso came to the conclusion a few years ago that therewas need for an introduction to and overview of my sixty years ofmanagement writings But hemdashrightlymdashsaw that the US andUK (and probably altogether the Western) audience for such awork would be both broader and narrower than the audience forthe Japanese venture It would be broader because there is in theWest a growing number of people who while not themselves exec-utives have come to see management as an area of public interestthere are also an increasing number of students in colleges and uni-versities who while not necessarily management students see anunderstanding of management as part of a general education andfinally there are a large and rapidly growing number of mid-careermanagers and professionals who are flocking to advanced-executiveprograms both in universities and in their employing organiza-tions The focus would however also be narrower because these

vi i n t r o d u c t i o n

-1__0__

+1__

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page vi

additional audiences need and want less an introduction to andoverview of Druckerrsquos work than they want a concise comprehen-sive and sharply focused Introduction to Management and tomanagement alone And thus while using Mr Uedarsquos editing andabridging Cass Canfield Jr (with my full indeed my enthusiasticsupport) selected and edited the texts from the Japanese three-volumeedition into a comprehensive cohesive and self-contained intro-duction to managementmdashboth of the management of an enterpriseand of the self-management of the individual whether executive orprofessional within an enterprise and altogether in our society ofmanaged organizations

My readers as well as I owe to both Atsuo Ueda and Cass Can-field Jr an enormous debt of gratitude The two put an incredibleamount of work and dedication into The Essential Drucker And theend product is not only the best introduction to onersquos work anyauthor could possibly have asked for It is also I am convinced atruly unique cohesive and self-contained introduction to manage-ment its basic principles and concerns its problems challengesopportunities

This volume as said before is also an overview of my works onmanagement Readers may therefore want to know where to go inmy books to further pursue this or that topic or this or that area ofparticular interest to them Here therefore are the sources in mybooks for each of twenty-six chapters of the The Essential Drucker

Chapter 1 and 26 are excerpted from The New Realities (1988)Chapters 2 3 5 18 are excerpted from Management Tasks

Responsibilities Practices (1974)Chapters 4 and 19 are excerpted from Managing for the Future

(1992) and were first published in the Harvard Business Review(1989) and in the Wall Street Journal (1988) respectively

Chapters 6 15 and 21 are excerpted from Management Chal-lenges for the 21st Century (1999)

Chapters 7 and 23 are excerpted from Management in a Timeof Great Change (1995) and were first published in the Harvard

i n t r o d u c t i o n vii

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page vii

Business Review (1994) and in the Atlantic Monthly (1996) respec-tively

Chapter 8 was excerpted from The Practice of Management(1954)

Chapter 9 was excerpted from The Frontiers of Management(1986) and was first published in the Harvard Business Review(1985)

Chapters 10 11 12 20 24 were excerpted from Innovation andEntrepreneurship (1985)

Chapters 13 14 16 17 were excerpted from The Effective Exec-utive (1966)

Chapters 22 and 25 were excerpted from Post-Capitalist Society(1993)

All these books are still in print in the United States and inmany other countries

This one-volume edition of The Essential Drucker does nothowever include any excerpts from five important Managementbooks of mine The Future of Industrial Man (1942) Concept of theCorporation (1946) Managing for Results (1964 the first book onwhat is now called ldquostrategyrdquo a term unknown for business fortyyears ago) Managing in Turbulent Times (1980) Managing theNon-Profit Organization (1990) These are important books andstill widely read and used But their subject matter is more special-izedmdashand in some cases also more technicalmdashthan that of thebooks from which the chapters of the present book were chosenmdashand thus had to be left out of a work that calls itself Essential

mdashPeter F DruckerClaremont California

Spring 2001

viii i n t r o d u c t i o n

-1__0__

+1__

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page viii

__ -1__ 0__+1

I

M A N A G E M E N T

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 1

-1__0__

+1__

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 2

When Karl Marx was beginning work on Das Kapital in the1850s the phenomenon of management was unknown So

were the enterprises that managers run The largest manufacturingcompany around was a Manchester cotton mill employing fewerthan three hundred people and owned by Marxrsquos friend and collab-orator Friedrich Engels And in Engelsrsquos millmdashone of the mostprofitable businesses of its daymdashthere were no ldquomanagersrdquo onlyldquocharge handsrdquo who themselves workers enforced discipline over ahandful of fellow ldquoproletariansrdquo

Rarely in human history has any institution emerged as quicklyas management or had as great an impact so fast In less than 150years management has transformed the social and economic fabricof the worldrsquos developed countries It has created a global economyand set new rules for countries that would participate in that econ-omy as equals And it has itself been transformed Few executivesare aware of the tremendous impact management has had Indeed agood many are like M Jourdain the character in Moliegraverersquos Bour-geois Gentilhomme who did not know that he spoke prose Theybarely realize that they practicemdashor mispracticemdashmanagement As

__ -1__ 0__+1

1

management a ssoc ial funct ion and

l iberal art

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 3

4 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

a result they are ill prepared for the tremendous challenges thatnow confront them The truly important problems managers facedo not come from technology or politics they do not originate out-side of management and enterprise They are problems caused bythe very success of management itself

To be sure the fundamental task of management remains thesame to make people capable of joint performance through com-mon goals common values the right structure and the trainingand development they need to perform and to respond to changeBut the very meaning of this task has changed if only because theperformance of management has converted the workforce from onecomposed largely of unskilled laborers to one of highly educatedknowledge workers

The Orig ins and Deve lopment of Management

On the threshold of World War I a few thinkers were just becom-ing aware of managementrsquos existence But few people even in themost advanced countries had anything to do with it Now the largestsingle group in the labor force more than one-third of the total arepeople whom the US Bureau of the Census calls ldquomanagerial andprofessionalrdquo Management has been the main agent of this trans-formation Management explains why for the first time in humanhistory we can employ large numbers of knowledgeable skilledpeople in productive work No earlier society could do thisIndeed no earlier society could support more than a handful ofsuch people Until quite recently no one knew how to put peoplewith different skills and knowledge together to achieve commongoals

Eighteenth-century China was the envy of contemporary West-ern intellectuals because it supplied more jobs for educated peoplethan all of Europe didmdashsome twenty thousand per year Today theUnited States with about the same population China then hadgraduates nearly a million college students a year few of whom have

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 4

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 5

__ -1__ 0__+1

the slightest difficulty finding well-paid employment Managementenables us to employ them

Knowledge especially advanced knowledge is always special-ized By itself it produces nothing Yet a modern business and notonly the largest ones may employ up to ten thousand highly knowl-edgeable people who represent up to sixty different knowledge areasEngineers of all sorts designers marketing experts economistsstatisticians psychologists planners accountants human-resourcespeoplemdashall working together in a joint venture None would beeffective without the managed enterprise

There is no point in asking which came first the educationalexplosion of the last one hundred years or the management that putthis knowledge to productive use Modern management and mod-ern enterprise could not exist without the knowledge base thatdeveloped societies have built But equally it is management andmanagement alone that makes effective all this knowledge andthese knowledgeable people The emergence of management hasconverted knowledge from social ornament and luxury into the truecapital of any economy

Not many business leaders could have predicted this develop-ment back in 1870 when large enterprises were first beginning totake shape The reason was not so much lack of foresight as lack ofprecedent At that time the only large permanent organizationaround was the army Not surprisingly therefore its command-and-control structure became the model for the men who wereputting together transcontinental railroads steel mills modernbanks and department stores The command model with a veryfew at the top giving orders and a great many at the bottom obeyingthem remained the norm for nearly one hundred years But it wasnever as static as its longevity might suggest On the contrary itbegan to change almost at once as specialized knowledge of all sortspoured into enterprise

The first university-trained engineer in manufacturing industrywas hired by Siemens in Germany in 1867mdashhis name wasFriedrich von Hefner-Alteneck Within five years he had built a

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 5

6 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

research department Other specialized departments followed suitBy World War I the standard functions of a manufacturer had beendeveloped research and engineering manufacturing sales financeand accounting and a little later human resources (or personnel)

Even more important for its impact on enterprisemdashand on theworld economy in generalmdashwas another management-directeddevelopment that took place at this time That was the applicationof management to manual work in the form of training The childof wartime necessity training has propelled the transformation ofthe world economy in the last forty years because it allows low-wagecountries to do something that traditional economic theory hadsaid could never be done to become efficientmdashand yet still low-wagemdashcompetitors almost overnight

Adam Smith reported that it took several hundred years for acountry or region to develop a tradition of labor and the expertise inmanual and managerial skills needed to produce and market a givenproduct whether cotton textiles or violins

During World War I however large numbers of unskilledpreindustrial people had to be made productive workers in practi-cally no time To meet this need businesses in the United Statesand the United Kingdom began to apply the theory of scientificmanagement developed by Frederick W Taylor between 1885 and1910 to the systematic training of blue-collar workers on a largescale They analyzed tasks and broke them down into individualunskilled operations that could then be learned quite quickly Fur-ther developed in World War II training was then picked up by theJapanese and twenty years later by the South Koreans who madeit the basis for their countriesrsquo phenomenal development

During the 1920s and 1930s management was applied to manymore areas and aspects of the manufacturing business Decentraliza-tion for instance arose to combine the advantages of bigness andthe advantages of smallness within one enterprise Accounting wentfrom ldquobookkeepingrdquo to analysis and control Planning grew out ofthe ldquoGantt chartsrdquo designed in 1917 and 1918 to plan war produc-tion and so did the use of analytical logic and statistics which

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 6

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 7

__ -1__ 0__+1

employ quantification to convert experience and intuition into def-initions information and diagnosis Marketing evolved as a resultof applying management concepts to distribution and sellingMoreover as early as the mid-1920s and early 1930s some Ameri-can management pioneers such as Thomas Watson Sr at thefledgling IBM Robert E Wood at Sears Roebuck and GeorgeElton Mayo at the Harvard Business School began to question theway manufacturing was organized They concluded that the assem-bly line was a short-term compromise Despite its tremendous pro-ductivity it was poor economics because of its inflexibility poor useof human resources even poor engineering They began the think-ing and experimenting that eventually led to ldquoautomationrdquo as theway to organize the manufacturing process and to teamwork qual-ity circles and the information-based organization as the way tomanage human resources Every one of these managerial innova-tions represented the application of knowledge to work the substi-tution of system and information for guesswork brawn and toilEvery one to use Frederick Taylorrsquos term replaced ldquoworkingharderrdquo with ldquoworking smarterrdquo

The powerful effect of these changes became apparent duringWorld War II To the very end the Germans were by far the betterstrategists Having much shorter interior lines they needed fewersupport troops and could match their opponents in combatstrength Yet the Allies wonmdashtheir victory achieved by manage-ment The United States with one-fifth the population of all theother belligerents combined had almost as many men in uniformYet it produced more war materieacutel than all the others takentogether It managed to transport the stuff to fighting fronts as farapart as China Russia India Africa and Western Europe Nowonder then that by the warrsquos end almost all the world hadbecome management-conscious Or that management emerged as arecognizably distinct kind of work one that could be studied anddeveloped into a disciplinemdashas happened in each country that hasenjoyed economic leadership during the postwar period

After World War II we began to see that management is not

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 7

8 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

exclusively business management It pertains to every human effortthat brings together in one organization people of diverse knowl-edge and skills It needs to be applied to all third-sector institutionssuch as hospitals universities churches arts organizations andsocial service agencies which since World War II have grown fasterin the United States than either business or government For eventhough the need to manage volunteers or raise funds may differen-tiate nonprofit managers from their for-profit peers many more oftheir responsibilities are the samemdashamong them defining the rightstrategy and goals developing people measuring performance andmarketing the organizationrsquos services Management worldwide hasbecome the new social function

Management and Entrepreneurship

One important advance in the discipline and practice of manage-ment is that both now embrace entrepreneurship and innovation Asham fight these days pits ldquomanagementrdquo against ldquoentrepreneur-shiprdquo as adversaries if not as mutually exclusive Thatrsquos like sayingthat the fingering hand and the bow hand of the violinist areldquoadversariesrdquo or ldquomutually exclusiverdquo Both are always needed andat the same time And both have to be coordinated and worktogether Any existing organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital goes down fast if it does not innovateConversely any new organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital collapses if it does not manage Not toinnovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing orga-nizations Not to know how to manage is the single largest reasonfor the failure of new ventures

Yet few management books have paid attention to entrepreneur-ship and innovation One reason is that during the period afterWorld War II when most of those books were written managingthe existing rather than innovating the new and different was thedominant task During this period most institutions developed

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 8

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 9

__ -1__ 0__+1

along lines laid down thirty or fifty years earlier This has nowchanged dramatically We have again entered an era of innovationand it is by no means confined to ldquohigh-techrdquo or to technology gen-erally In fact social innovationmdashas this chapter tries to makeclearmdashmay be of greater importance and have much greater impactthan any scientific or technical invention Furthermore we nowhave a ldquodisciplinerdquo of entrepreneurship and innovation (see myInnovation and Entrepreneurship 1986) It is clearly a part of man-agement and rests indeed on well-known and tested managementprinciples It applies to both existing organizations and new ven-tures and to both business and nonbusiness institutions includinggovernment

The Accountabi l i ty of Management

Management books tend to focus on the function of managementinside its organization Few yet accept it as a social function But itis precisely because management has become so pervasive as a socialfunction that it faces its most serious challenge To whom is man-agement accountable And for what On what does managementbase its power What gives it legitimacy

These are not business questions or economic questions Theyare political questions Yet they underlie the most serious assault onmanagement in its historymdasha far more serious assault than anymounted by Marxists or labor unions the hostile takeover AnAmerican phenomenon at first it has spread throughout the non-Communist developed world What made it possible was the emer-gence of the employee pension funds as the controlling shareholdersof publicly owned companies The pension funds while legallyldquoownersrdquo are economically ldquoinvestorsrdquomdashand indeed often ldquospecu-latorsrdquo They have no interest in the enterprise and its welfare Infact in the United States at least they are ldquotrusteesrdquo and are notsupposed to consider anything but immediate pecuniary gainWhat underlies the takeover bid is the postulate that the enterprisersquos

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 9

10 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

sole function is to provide the largest possible immediate gain to theshareholder In the absence of any other justification for managementand enterprise the ldquoraiderrdquo with his hostile takeover bid prevailsmdashand only too often immediately dismantles or loots the going con-cern sacrificing long-range wealth-producing capacity to short-termgains

Managementmdashand not only in the business enterprisemdashhas tobe accountable for performance But how is performance to bedefined How is it to be measured How is it to be enforced And towhom should management be accountable That these questionscan be asked is in itself a measure of the success and importance ofmanagement That they need to be asked is however also anindictment of managers They have not yet faced up to the fact thatthey represent powermdashand power has to be accountable has to belegitimate They have not yet faced up to the fact that they matter

What Is Management

But what is management Is it a bag of techniques and tricks Abundle of analytical tools like those taught in business schoolsThese are important to be sure just as thermometer and anatomyare important to the physician But the evolution and history ofmanagementmdashits successes as well as its problemsmdashteach thatmanagement is above all else based on a very few essential princi-ples To be specific

Management is about human beings Its task is to make peo-ple capable of joint performance to make their strengthseffective and their weaknesses irrelevant This is what organi-zation is all about and it is the reason that management is thecritical determining factor These days practically all of uswork for a managed institution large or small business ornonbusiness We depend on management for our livelihoods

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 10

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 11

__ -1__ 0__+1

And our ability to contribute to society also depends as muchon the management of the organization for which we work asit does on our own skills dedication and effort

Because management deals with the integration of people in acommon venture it is deeply embedded in culture Whatmanagers do in West Germany in the United Kingdom inthe United States in Japan or in Brazil is exactly the sameHow they do it may be quite different Thus one of the basicchallenges managers in a developing country face is to findand identify those parts of their own tradition history andculture that can be used as management building blocks Thedifference between Japanrsquos economic success and Indiarsquos rela-tive backwardness is largely explained by the fact thatJapanese managers were able to plant imported managementconcepts in their own cultural soil and make them grow

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals andshared values Without such commitment there is no enter-prise there is only a mob The enterprise must have simpleclear and unifying objectives The mission of the organiza-tion has to be clear enough and big enough to provide com-mon vision The goals that embody it have to be clear publicand constantly reaffirmed Managementrsquos first job is to thinkthrough set and exemplify those objectives values andgoals

Management must also enable the enterprise and each of itsmembers to grow and develop as needs and opportunitieschange Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institu-tion Training and development must be built into it on alllevelsmdashtraining and development that never stop

Every enterprise is composed of people with different skillsand knowledge doing many different kinds of work It mustbe built on communication and on individual responsibilityAll members need to think through what they aim to accom-plishmdashand make sure that their associates know and under-

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 11

12 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

stand that aim All have to think through what they owe toothersmdashand make sure that others understand All have tothink through what they in turn need from othersmdashandmake sure that others know what is expected of them

Neither the quantity of output nor the ldquobottom linerdquo is byitself an adequate measure of the performance of managementand enterprise Market standing innovation productivitydevelopment of people quality financial resultsmdashall are cru-cial to an organizationrsquos performance and to its survival Non-profit institutions too need measurements in a number ofareas specific to their mission Just as a human being needs adiversity of measures to assess his or her health and perfor-mance an organization needs a diversity of measures to assessits health and performance Performance has to be built intothe enterprise and its management it has to be measuredmdashorat least judgedmdashand it has to be continually improved

Finally the single most important thing to remember aboutany enterprise is that results exist only on the outside Theresult of a business is a satisfied customer The result of a hos-pital is a healed patient The result of a school is a studentwho has learned something and puts it to work ten years laterInside an enterprise there are only costs

Managers who understand these principles and function in theirlight will be achieving accomplished managers

Management as a Libera l Ar t

Thirty years ago the English scientist and novelist C P Snowtalked of the ldquotwo culturesrdquo of contemporary society Managementhowever fits neither Snowrsquos ldquohumanistrdquo nor his ldquoscientistrdquo It dealswith action and application and its test is results This makes it atechnology But management also deals with people their valuestheir growth and developmentmdashand this makes it a humanity So

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 12

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 13

__ -1__ 0__+1

does its concern with and impact on social structure and the com-munity Indeed as everyone has learned who like this author hasbeen working with managers of all kinds of institutions for longyears management is deeply involved in moral concernsmdashthenature of man good and evil

Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal artmdashldquoliberalrdquo because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge self-knowledge wisdom and leadership ldquoartrdquo because it is alsoconcerned with practice and application Managers draw on all theknowledges and insights of the humanities and the social sciencesmdashon psychology and philosophy on economics and history onethicsmdashas well as on the physical sciences But they have to focusthis knowledge on effectiveness and resultsmdashon healing a sickpatient teaching a student building a bridge designing and sellinga ldquouser-friendlyrdquo software program

For these reasons management will increasingly be the disci-pline and the practice through which the ldquohumanitiesrdquo will againacquire recognition impact and relevance

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 13

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 14

__ -1__ 0__+1

II

T H E I N D I V I D U A L

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 15

-1__0__

+1__

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 16

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

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22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

he increasingly got invited to conduct Japanese conferences andseminars on my work and found himself being asked over and overagainmdashespecially by younger people both students and executivesat the start of their careersmdashWhere do I start reading Drucker

This led Mr Ueda to reread my entire work to select from itthe most pertinent chapters and to abridge them so that they readas if they had originally been written as one cohesive text Theresult was a three-volume essential Drucker of fifty-seven chap-tersmdashone volume on the management of organizations one vol-ume on the individual in the society of organizations one onsociety in generalmdashwhich was published in Japan in the summerand fall of 2000 and has met with great success It is also beingpublished in Taiwan mainland China and Korea and inArgentina Mexico and Brazil

It is Mr Uedarsquos text that is being used for the US and UKeditions of The Essential Drucker But these editions not only areless than half the size of Mr Uedarsquos original Japanese versionmdashtwenty-six chapters versus the three-volumesrsquo fifty-seven They alsohave a somewhat different focus Cass Canfield Jr at HarperCollinsin the United Statesmdashlongtime friend and my US editor for overthirty yearsmdashalso came to the conclusion a few years ago that therewas need for an introduction to and overview of my sixty years ofmanagement writings But hemdashrightlymdashsaw that the US andUK (and probably altogether the Western) audience for such awork would be both broader and narrower than the audience forthe Japanese venture It would be broader because there is in theWest a growing number of people who while not themselves exec-utives have come to see management as an area of public interestthere are also an increasing number of students in colleges and uni-versities who while not necessarily management students see anunderstanding of management as part of a general education andfinally there are a large and rapidly growing number of mid-careermanagers and professionals who are flocking to advanced-executiveprograms both in universities and in their employing organiza-tions The focus would however also be narrower because these

vi i n t r o d u c t i o n

-1__0__

+1__

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page vi

additional audiences need and want less an introduction to andoverview of Druckerrsquos work than they want a concise comprehen-sive and sharply focused Introduction to Management and tomanagement alone And thus while using Mr Uedarsquos editing andabridging Cass Canfield Jr (with my full indeed my enthusiasticsupport) selected and edited the texts from the Japanese three-volumeedition into a comprehensive cohesive and self-contained intro-duction to managementmdashboth of the management of an enterpriseand of the self-management of the individual whether executive orprofessional within an enterprise and altogether in our society ofmanaged organizations

My readers as well as I owe to both Atsuo Ueda and Cass Can-field Jr an enormous debt of gratitude The two put an incredibleamount of work and dedication into The Essential Drucker And theend product is not only the best introduction to onersquos work anyauthor could possibly have asked for It is also I am convinced atruly unique cohesive and self-contained introduction to manage-ment its basic principles and concerns its problems challengesopportunities

This volume as said before is also an overview of my works onmanagement Readers may therefore want to know where to go inmy books to further pursue this or that topic or this or that area ofparticular interest to them Here therefore are the sources in mybooks for each of twenty-six chapters of the The Essential Drucker

Chapter 1 and 26 are excerpted from The New Realities (1988)Chapters 2 3 5 18 are excerpted from Management Tasks

Responsibilities Practices (1974)Chapters 4 and 19 are excerpted from Managing for the Future

(1992) and were first published in the Harvard Business Review(1989) and in the Wall Street Journal (1988) respectively

Chapters 6 15 and 21 are excerpted from Management Chal-lenges for the 21st Century (1999)

Chapters 7 and 23 are excerpted from Management in a Timeof Great Change (1995) and were first published in the Harvard

i n t r o d u c t i o n vii

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page vii

Business Review (1994) and in the Atlantic Monthly (1996) respec-tively

Chapter 8 was excerpted from The Practice of Management(1954)

Chapter 9 was excerpted from The Frontiers of Management(1986) and was first published in the Harvard Business Review(1985)

Chapters 10 11 12 20 24 were excerpted from Innovation andEntrepreneurship (1985)

Chapters 13 14 16 17 were excerpted from The Effective Exec-utive (1966)

Chapters 22 and 25 were excerpted from Post-Capitalist Society(1993)

All these books are still in print in the United States and inmany other countries

This one-volume edition of The Essential Drucker does nothowever include any excerpts from five important Managementbooks of mine The Future of Industrial Man (1942) Concept of theCorporation (1946) Managing for Results (1964 the first book onwhat is now called ldquostrategyrdquo a term unknown for business fortyyears ago) Managing in Turbulent Times (1980) Managing theNon-Profit Organization (1990) These are important books andstill widely read and used But their subject matter is more special-izedmdashand in some cases also more technicalmdashthan that of thebooks from which the chapters of the present book were chosenmdashand thus had to be left out of a work that calls itself Essential

mdashPeter F DruckerClaremont California

Spring 2001

viii i n t r o d u c t i o n

-1__0__

+1__

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page viii

__ -1__ 0__+1

I

M A N A G E M E N T

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 1

-1__0__

+1__

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 2

When Karl Marx was beginning work on Das Kapital in the1850s the phenomenon of management was unknown So

were the enterprises that managers run The largest manufacturingcompany around was a Manchester cotton mill employing fewerthan three hundred people and owned by Marxrsquos friend and collab-orator Friedrich Engels And in Engelsrsquos millmdashone of the mostprofitable businesses of its daymdashthere were no ldquomanagersrdquo onlyldquocharge handsrdquo who themselves workers enforced discipline over ahandful of fellow ldquoproletariansrdquo

Rarely in human history has any institution emerged as quicklyas management or had as great an impact so fast In less than 150years management has transformed the social and economic fabricof the worldrsquos developed countries It has created a global economyand set new rules for countries that would participate in that econ-omy as equals And it has itself been transformed Few executivesare aware of the tremendous impact management has had Indeed agood many are like M Jourdain the character in Moliegraverersquos Bour-geois Gentilhomme who did not know that he spoke prose Theybarely realize that they practicemdashor mispracticemdashmanagement As

__ -1__ 0__+1

1

management a ssoc ial funct ion and

l iberal art

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 3

4 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

a result they are ill prepared for the tremendous challenges thatnow confront them The truly important problems managers facedo not come from technology or politics they do not originate out-side of management and enterprise They are problems caused bythe very success of management itself

To be sure the fundamental task of management remains thesame to make people capable of joint performance through com-mon goals common values the right structure and the trainingand development they need to perform and to respond to changeBut the very meaning of this task has changed if only because theperformance of management has converted the workforce from onecomposed largely of unskilled laborers to one of highly educatedknowledge workers

The Orig ins and Deve lopment of Management

On the threshold of World War I a few thinkers were just becom-ing aware of managementrsquos existence But few people even in themost advanced countries had anything to do with it Now the largestsingle group in the labor force more than one-third of the total arepeople whom the US Bureau of the Census calls ldquomanagerial andprofessionalrdquo Management has been the main agent of this trans-formation Management explains why for the first time in humanhistory we can employ large numbers of knowledgeable skilledpeople in productive work No earlier society could do thisIndeed no earlier society could support more than a handful ofsuch people Until quite recently no one knew how to put peoplewith different skills and knowledge together to achieve commongoals

Eighteenth-century China was the envy of contemporary West-ern intellectuals because it supplied more jobs for educated peoplethan all of Europe didmdashsome twenty thousand per year Today theUnited States with about the same population China then hadgraduates nearly a million college students a year few of whom have

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 4

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 5

__ -1__ 0__+1

the slightest difficulty finding well-paid employment Managementenables us to employ them

Knowledge especially advanced knowledge is always special-ized By itself it produces nothing Yet a modern business and notonly the largest ones may employ up to ten thousand highly knowl-edgeable people who represent up to sixty different knowledge areasEngineers of all sorts designers marketing experts economistsstatisticians psychologists planners accountants human-resourcespeoplemdashall working together in a joint venture None would beeffective without the managed enterprise

There is no point in asking which came first the educationalexplosion of the last one hundred years or the management that putthis knowledge to productive use Modern management and mod-ern enterprise could not exist without the knowledge base thatdeveloped societies have built But equally it is management andmanagement alone that makes effective all this knowledge andthese knowledgeable people The emergence of management hasconverted knowledge from social ornament and luxury into the truecapital of any economy

Not many business leaders could have predicted this develop-ment back in 1870 when large enterprises were first beginning totake shape The reason was not so much lack of foresight as lack ofprecedent At that time the only large permanent organizationaround was the army Not surprisingly therefore its command-and-control structure became the model for the men who wereputting together transcontinental railroads steel mills modernbanks and department stores The command model with a veryfew at the top giving orders and a great many at the bottom obeyingthem remained the norm for nearly one hundred years But it wasnever as static as its longevity might suggest On the contrary itbegan to change almost at once as specialized knowledge of all sortspoured into enterprise

The first university-trained engineer in manufacturing industrywas hired by Siemens in Germany in 1867mdashhis name wasFriedrich von Hefner-Alteneck Within five years he had built a

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 5

6 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

research department Other specialized departments followed suitBy World War I the standard functions of a manufacturer had beendeveloped research and engineering manufacturing sales financeand accounting and a little later human resources (or personnel)

Even more important for its impact on enterprisemdashand on theworld economy in generalmdashwas another management-directeddevelopment that took place at this time That was the applicationof management to manual work in the form of training The childof wartime necessity training has propelled the transformation ofthe world economy in the last forty years because it allows low-wagecountries to do something that traditional economic theory hadsaid could never be done to become efficientmdashand yet still low-wagemdashcompetitors almost overnight

Adam Smith reported that it took several hundred years for acountry or region to develop a tradition of labor and the expertise inmanual and managerial skills needed to produce and market a givenproduct whether cotton textiles or violins

During World War I however large numbers of unskilledpreindustrial people had to be made productive workers in practi-cally no time To meet this need businesses in the United Statesand the United Kingdom began to apply the theory of scientificmanagement developed by Frederick W Taylor between 1885 and1910 to the systematic training of blue-collar workers on a largescale They analyzed tasks and broke them down into individualunskilled operations that could then be learned quite quickly Fur-ther developed in World War II training was then picked up by theJapanese and twenty years later by the South Koreans who madeit the basis for their countriesrsquo phenomenal development

During the 1920s and 1930s management was applied to manymore areas and aspects of the manufacturing business Decentraliza-tion for instance arose to combine the advantages of bigness andthe advantages of smallness within one enterprise Accounting wentfrom ldquobookkeepingrdquo to analysis and control Planning grew out ofthe ldquoGantt chartsrdquo designed in 1917 and 1918 to plan war produc-tion and so did the use of analytical logic and statistics which

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 6

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 7

__ -1__ 0__+1

employ quantification to convert experience and intuition into def-initions information and diagnosis Marketing evolved as a resultof applying management concepts to distribution and sellingMoreover as early as the mid-1920s and early 1930s some Ameri-can management pioneers such as Thomas Watson Sr at thefledgling IBM Robert E Wood at Sears Roebuck and GeorgeElton Mayo at the Harvard Business School began to question theway manufacturing was organized They concluded that the assem-bly line was a short-term compromise Despite its tremendous pro-ductivity it was poor economics because of its inflexibility poor useof human resources even poor engineering They began the think-ing and experimenting that eventually led to ldquoautomationrdquo as theway to organize the manufacturing process and to teamwork qual-ity circles and the information-based organization as the way tomanage human resources Every one of these managerial innova-tions represented the application of knowledge to work the substi-tution of system and information for guesswork brawn and toilEvery one to use Frederick Taylorrsquos term replaced ldquoworkingharderrdquo with ldquoworking smarterrdquo

The powerful effect of these changes became apparent duringWorld War II To the very end the Germans were by far the betterstrategists Having much shorter interior lines they needed fewersupport troops and could match their opponents in combatstrength Yet the Allies wonmdashtheir victory achieved by manage-ment The United States with one-fifth the population of all theother belligerents combined had almost as many men in uniformYet it produced more war materieacutel than all the others takentogether It managed to transport the stuff to fighting fronts as farapart as China Russia India Africa and Western Europe Nowonder then that by the warrsquos end almost all the world hadbecome management-conscious Or that management emerged as arecognizably distinct kind of work one that could be studied anddeveloped into a disciplinemdashas happened in each country that hasenjoyed economic leadership during the postwar period

After World War II we began to see that management is not

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 7

8 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

exclusively business management It pertains to every human effortthat brings together in one organization people of diverse knowl-edge and skills It needs to be applied to all third-sector institutionssuch as hospitals universities churches arts organizations andsocial service agencies which since World War II have grown fasterin the United States than either business or government For eventhough the need to manage volunteers or raise funds may differen-tiate nonprofit managers from their for-profit peers many more oftheir responsibilities are the samemdashamong them defining the rightstrategy and goals developing people measuring performance andmarketing the organizationrsquos services Management worldwide hasbecome the new social function

Management and Entrepreneurship

One important advance in the discipline and practice of manage-ment is that both now embrace entrepreneurship and innovation Asham fight these days pits ldquomanagementrdquo against ldquoentrepreneur-shiprdquo as adversaries if not as mutually exclusive Thatrsquos like sayingthat the fingering hand and the bow hand of the violinist areldquoadversariesrdquo or ldquomutually exclusiverdquo Both are always needed andat the same time And both have to be coordinated and worktogether Any existing organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital goes down fast if it does not innovateConversely any new organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital collapses if it does not manage Not toinnovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing orga-nizations Not to know how to manage is the single largest reasonfor the failure of new ventures

Yet few management books have paid attention to entrepreneur-ship and innovation One reason is that during the period afterWorld War II when most of those books were written managingthe existing rather than innovating the new and different was thedominant task During this period most institutions developed

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 8

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 9

__ -1__ 0__+1

along lines laid down thirty or fifty years earlier This has nowchanged dramatically We have again entered an era of innovationand it is by no means confined to ldquohigh-techrdquo or to technology gen-erally In fact social innovationmdashas this chapter tries to makeclearmdashmay be of greater importance and have much greater impactthan any scientific or technical invention Furthermore we nowhave a ldquodisciplinerdquo of entrepreneurship and innovation (see myInnovation and Entrepreneurship 1986) It is clearly a part of man-agement and rests indeed on well-known and tested managementprinciples It applies to both existing organizations and new ven-tures and to both business and nonbusiness institutions includinggovernment

The Accountabi l i ty of Management

Management books tend to focus on the function of managementinside its organization Few yet accept it as a social function But itis precisely because management has become so pervasive as a socialfunction that it faces its most serious challenge To whom is man-agement accountable And for what On what does managementbase its power What gives it legitimacy

These are not business questions or economic questions Theyare political questions Yet they underlie the most serious assault onmanagement in its historymdasha far more serious assault than anymounted by Marxists or labor unions the hostile takeover AnAmerican phenomenon at first it has spread throughout the non-Communist developed world What made it possible was the emer-gence of the employee pension funds as the controlling shareholdersof publicly owned companies The pension funds while legallyldquoownersrdquo are economically ldquoinvestorsrdquomdashand indeed often ldquospecu-latorsrdquo They have no interest in the enterprise and its welfare Infact in the United States at least they are ldquotrusteesrdquo and are notsupposed to consider anything but immediate pecuniary gainWhat underlies the takeover bid is the postulate that the enterprisersquos

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 9

10 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

sole function is to provide the largest possible immediate gain to theshareholder In the absence of any other justification for managementand enterprise the ldquoraiderrdquo with his hostile takeover bid prevailsmdashand only too often immediately dismantles or loots the going con-cern sacrificing long-range wealth-producing capacity to short-termgains

Managementmdashand not only in the business enterprisemdashhas tobe accountable for performance But how is performance to bedefined How is it to be measured How is it to be enforced And towhom should management be accountable That these questionscan be asked is in itself a measure of the success and importance ofmanagement That they need to be asked is however also anindictment of managers They have not yet faced up to the fact thatthey represent powermdashand power has to be accountable has to belegitimate They have not yet faced up to the fact that they matter

What Is Management

But what is management Is it a bag of techniques and tricks Abundle of analytical tools like those taught in business schoolsThese are important to be sure just as thermometer and anatomyare important to the physician But the evolution and history ofmanagementmdashits successes as well as its problemsmdashteach thatmanagement is above all else based on a very few essential princi-ples To be specific

Management is about human beings Its task is to make peo-ple capable of joint performance to make their strengthseffective and their weaknesses irrelevant This is what organi-zation is all about and it is the reason that management is thecritical determining factor These days practically all of uswork for a managed institution large or small business ornonbusiness We depend on management for our livelihoods

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 10

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 11

__ -1__ 0__+1

And our ability to contribute to society also depends as muchon the management of the organization for which we work asit does on our own skills dedication and effort

Because management deals with the integration of people in acommon venture it is deeply embedded in culture Whatmanagers do in West Germany in the United Kingdom inthe United States in Japan or in Brazil is exactly the sameHow they do it may be quite different Thus one of the basicchallenges managers in a developing country face is to findand identify those parts of their own tradition history andculture that can be used as management building blocks Thedifference between Japanrsquos economic success and Indiarsquos rela-tive backwardness is largely explained by the fact thatJapanese managers were able to plant imported managementconcepts in their own cultural soil and make them grow

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals andshared values Without such commitment there is no enter-prise there is only a mob The enterprise must have simpleclear and unifying objectives The mission of the organiza-tion has to be clear enough and big enough to provide com-mon vision The goals that embody it have to be clear publicand constantly reaffirmed Managementrsquos first job is to thinkthrough set and exemplify those objectives values andgoals

Management must also enable the enterprise and each of itsmembers to grow and develop as needs and opportunitieschange Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institu-tion Training and development must be built into it on alllevelsmdashtraining and development that never stop

Every enterprise is composed of people with different skillsand knowledge doing many different kinds of work It mustbe built on communication and on individual responsibilityAll members need to think through what they aim to accom-plishmdashand make sure that their associates know and under-

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 11

12 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

stand that aim All have to think through what they owe toothersmdashand make sure that others understand All have tothink through what they in turn need from othersmdashandmake sure that others know what is expected of them

Neither the quantity of output nor the ldquobottom linerdquo is byitself an adequate measure of the performance of managementand enterprise Market standing innovation productivitydevelopment of people quality financial resultsmdashall are cru-cial to an organizationrsquos performance and to its survival Non-profit institutions too need measurements in a number ofareas specific to their mission Just as a human being needs adiversity of measures to assess his or her health and perfor-mance an organization needs a diversity of measures to assessits health and performance Performance has to be built intothe enterprise and its management it has to be measuredmdashorat least judgedmdashand it has to be continually improved

Finally the single most important thing to remember aboutany enterprise is that results exist only on the outside Theresult of a business is a satisfied customer The result of a hos-pital is a healed patient The result of a school is a studentwho has learned something and puts it to work ten years laterInside an enterprise there are only costs

Managers who understand these principles and function in theirlight will be achieving accomplished managers

Management as a Libera l Ar t

Thirty years ago the English scientist and novelist C P Snowtalked of the ldquotwo culturesrdquo of contemporary society Managementhowever fits neither Snowrsquos ldquohumanistrdquo nor his ldquoscientistrdquo It dealswith action and application and its test is results This makes it atechnology But management also deals with people their valuestheir growth and developmentmdashand this makes it a humanity So

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 12

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 13

__ -1__ 0__+1

does its concern with and impact on social structure and the com-munity Indeed as everyone has learned who like this author hasbeen working with managers of all kinds of institutions for longyears management is deeply involved in moral concernsmdashthenature of man good and evil

Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal artmdashldquoliberalrdquo because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge self-knowledge wisdom and leadership ldquoartrdquo because it is alsoconcerned with practice and application Managers draw on all theknowledges and insights of the humanities and the social sciencesmdashon psychology and philosophy on economics and history onethicsmdashas well as on the physical sciences But they have to focusthis knowledge on effectiveness and resultsmdashon healing a sickpatient teaching a student building a bridge designing and sellinga ldquouser-friendlyrdquo software program

For these reasons management will increasingly be the disci-pline and the practice through which the ldquohumanitiesrdquo will againacquire recognition impact and relevance

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 13

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 14

__ -1__ 0__+1

II

T H E I N D I V I D U A L

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 15

-1__0__

+1__

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 16

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

additional audiences need and want less an introduction to andoverview of Druckerrsquos work than they want a concise comprehen-sive and sharply focused Introduction to Management and tomanagement alone And thus while using Mr Uedarsquos editing andabridging Cass Canfield Jr (with my full indeed my enthusiasticsupport) selected and edited the texts from the Japanese three-volumeedition into a comprehensive cohesive and self-contained intro-duction to managementmdashboth of the management of an enterpriseand of the self-management of the individual whether executive orprofessional within an enterprise and altogether in our society ofmanaged organizations

My readers as well as I owe to both Atsuo Ueda and Cass Can-field Jr an enormous debt of gratitude The two put an incredibleamount of work and dedication into The Essential Drucker And theend product is not only the best introduction to onersquos work anyauthor could possibly have asked for It is also I am convinced atruly unique cohesive and self-contained introduction to manage-ment its basic principles and concerns its problems challengesopportunities

This volume as said before is also an overview of my works onmanagement Readers may therefore want to know where to go inmy books to further pursue this or that topic or this or that area ofparticular interest to them Here therefore are the sources in mybooks for each of twenty-six chapters of the The Essential Drucker

Chapter 1 and 26 are excerpted from The New Realities (1988)Chapters 2 3 5 18 are excerpted from Management Tasks

Responsibilities Practices (1974)Chapters 4 and 19 are excerpted from Managing for the Future

(1992) and were first published in the Harvard Business Review(1989) and in the Wall Street Journal (1988) respectively

Chapters 6 15 and 21 are excerpted from Management Chal-lenges for the 21st Century (1999)

Chapters 7 and 23 are excerpted from Management in a Timeof Great Change (1995) and were first published in the Harvard

i n t r o d u c t i o n vii

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page vii

Business Review (1994) and in the Atlantic Monthly (1996) respec-tively

Chapter 8 was excerpted from The Practice of Management(1954)

Chapter 9 was excerpted from The Frontiers of Management(1986) and was first published in the Harvard Business Review(1985)

Chapters 10 11 12 20 24 were excerpted from Innovation andEntrepreneurship (1985)

Chapters 13 14 16 17 were excerpted from The Effective Exec-utive (1966)

Chapters 22 and 25 were excerpted from Post-Capitalist Society(1993)

All these books are still in print in the United States and inmany other countries

This one-volume edition of The Essential Drucker does nothowever include any excerpts from five important Managementbooks of mine The Future of Industrial Man (1942) Concept of theCorporation (1946) Managing for Results (1964 the first book onwhat is now called ldquostrategyrdquo a term unknown for business fortyyears ago) Managing in Turbulent Times (1980) Managing theNon-Profit Organization (1990) These are important books andstill widely read and used But their subject matter is more special-izedmdashand in some cases also more technicalmdashthan that of thebooks from which the chapters of the present book were chosenmdashand thus had to be left out of a work that calls itself Essential

mdashPeter F DruckerClaremont California

Spring 2001

viii i n t r o d u c t i o n

-1__0__

+1__

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page viii

__ -1__ 0__+1

I

M A N A G E M E N T

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 1

-1__0__

+1__

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 2

When Karl Marx was beginning work on Das Kapital in the1850s the phenomenon of management was unknown So

were the enterprises that managers run The largest manufacturingcompany around was a Manchester cotton mill employing fewerthan three hundred people and owned by Marxrsquos friend and collab-orator Friedrich Engels And in Engelsrsquos millmdashone of the mostprofitable businesses of its daymdashthere were no ldquomanagersrdquo onlyldquocharge handsrdquo who themselves workers enforced discipline over ahandful of fellow ldquoproletariansrdquo

Rarely in human history has any institution emerged as quicklyas management or had as great an impact so fast In less than 150years management has transformed the social and economic fabricof the worldrsquos developed countries It has created a global economyand set new rules for countries that would participate in that econ-omy as equals And it has itself been transformed Few executivesare aware of the tremendous impact management has had Indeed agood many are like M Jourdain the character in Moliegraverersquos Bour-geois Gentilhomme who did not know that he spoke prose Theybarely realize that they practicemdashor mispracticemdashmanagement As

__ -1__ 0__+1

1

management a ssoc ial funct ion and

l iberal art

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 3

4 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

a result they are ill prepared for the tremendous challenges thatnow confront them The truly important problems managers facedo not come from technology or politics they do not originate out-side of management and enterprise They are problems caused bythe very success of management itself

To be sure the fundamental task of management remains thesame to make people capable of joint performance through com-mon goals common values the right structure and the trainingand development they need to perform and to respond to changeBut the very meaning of this task has changed if only because theperformance of management has converted the workforce from onecomposed largely of unskilled laborers to one of highly educatedknowledge workers

The Orig ins and Deve lopment of Management

On the threshold of World War I a few thinkers were just becom-ing aware of managementrsquos existence But few people even in themost advanced countries had anything to do with it Now the largestsingle group in the labor force more than one-third of the total arepeople whom the US Bureau of the Census calls ldquomanagerial andprofessionalrdquo Management has been the main agent of this trans-formation Management explains why for the first time in humanhistory we can employ large numbers of knowledgeable skilledpeople in productive work No earlier society could do thisIndeed no earlier society could support more than a handful ofsuch people Until quite recently no one knew how to put peoplewith different skills and knowledge together to achieve commongoals

Eighteenth-century China was the envy of contemporary West-ern intellectuals because it supplied more jobs for educated peoplethan all of Europe didmdashsome twenty thousand per year Today theUnited States with about the same population China then hadgraduates nearly a million college students a year few of whom have

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 4

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 5

__ -1__ 0__+1

the slightest difficulty finding well-paid employment Managementenables us to employ them

Knowledge especially advanced knowledge is always special-ized By itself it produces nothing Yet a modern business and notonly the largest ones may employ up to ten thousand highly knowl-edgeable people who represent up to sixty different knowledge areasEngineers of all sorts designers marketing experts economistsstatisticians psychologists planners accountants human-resourcespeoplemdashall working together in a joint venture None would beeffective without the managed enterprise

There is no point in asking which came first the educationalexplosion of the last one hundred years or the management that putthis knowledge to productive use Modern management and mod-ern enterprise could not exist without the knowledge base thatdeveloped societies have built But equally it is management andmanagement alone that makes effective all this knowledge andthese knowledgeable people The emergence of management hasconverted knowledge from social ornament and luxury into the truecapital of any economy

Not many business leaders could have predicted this develop-ment back in 1870 when large enterprises were first beginning totake shape The reason was not so much lack of foresight as lack ofprecedent At that time the only large permanent organizationaround was the army Not surprisingly therefore its command-and-control structure became the model for the men who wereputting together transcontinental railroads steel mills modernbanks and department stores The command model with a veryfew at the top giving orders and a great many at the bottom obeyingthem remained the norm for nearly one hundred years But it wasnever as static as its longevity might suggest On the contrary itbegan to change almost at once as specialized knowledge of all sortspoured into enterprise

The first university-trained engineer in manufacturing industrywas hired by Siemens in Germany in 1867mdashhis name wasFriedrich von Hefner-Alteneck Within five years he had built a

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 5

6 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

research department Other specialized departments followed suitBy World War I the standard functions of a manufacturer had beendeveloped research and engineering manufacturing sales financeand accounting and a little later human resources (or personnel)

Even more important for its impact on enterprisemdashand on theworld economy in generalmdashwas another management-directeddevelopment that took place at this time That was the applicationof management to manual work in the form of training The childof wartime necessity training has propelled the transformation ofthe world economy in the last forty years because it allows low-wagecountries to do something that traditional economic theory hadsaid could never be done to become efficientmdashand yet still low-wagemdashcompetitors almost overnight

Adam Smith reported that it took several hundred years for acountry or region to develop a tradition of labor and the expertise inmanual and managerial skills needed to produce and market a givenproduct whether cotton textiles or violins

During World War I however large numbers of unskilledpreindustrial people had to be made productive workers in practi-cally no time To meet this need businesses in the United Statesand the United Kingdom began to apply the theory of scientificmanagement developed by Frederick W Taylor between 1885 and1910 to the systematic training of blue-collar workers on a largescale They analyzed tasks and broke them down into individualunskilled operations that could then be learned quite quickly Fur-ther developed in World War II training was then picked up by theJapanese and twenty years later by the South Koreans who madeit the basis for their countriesrsquo phenomenal development

During the 1920s and 1930s management was applied to manymore areas and aspects of the manufacturing business Decentraliza-tion for instance arose to combine the advantages of bigness andthe advantages of smallness within one enterprise Accounting wentfrom ldquobookkeepingrdquo to analysis and control Planning grew out ofthe ldquoGantt chartsrdquo designed in 1917 and 1918 to plan war produc-tion and so did the use of analytical logic and statistics which

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 6

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 7

__ -1__ 0__+1

employ quantification to convert experience and intuition into def-initions information and diagnosis Marketing evolved as a resultof applying management concepts to distribution and sellingMoreover as early as the mid-1920s and early 1930s some Ameri-can management pioneers such as Thomas Watson Sr at thefledgling IBM Robert E Wood at Sears Roebuck and GeorgeElton Mayo at the Harvard Business School began to question theway manufacturing was organized They concluded that the assem-bly line was a short-term compromise Despite its tremendous pro-ductivity it was poor economics because of its inflexibility poor useof human resources even poor engineering They began the think-ing and experimenting that eventually led to ldquoautomationrdquo as theway to organize the manufacturing process and to teamwork qual-ity circles and the information-based organization as the way tomanage human resources Every one of these managerial innova-tions represented the application of knowledge to work the substi-tution of system and information for guesswork brawn and toilEvery one to use Frederick Taylorrsquos term replaced ldquoworkingharderrdquo with ldquoworking smarterrdquo

The powerful effect of these changes became apparent duringWorld War II To the very end the Germans were by far the betterstrategists Having much shorter interior lines they needed fewersupport troops and could match their opponents in combatstrength Yet the Allies wonmdashtheir victory achieved by manage-ment The United States with one-fifth the population of all theother belligerents combined had almost as many men in uniformYet it produced more war materieacutel than all the others takentogether It managed to transport the stuff to fighting fronts as farapart as China Russia India Africa and Western Europe Nowonder then that by the warrsquos end almost all the world hadbecome management-conscious Or that management emerged as arecognizably distinct kind of work one that could be studied anddeveloped into a disciplinemdashas happened in each country that hasenjoyed economic leadership during the postwar period

After World War II we began to see that management is not

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 7

8 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

exclusively business management It pertains to every human effortthat brings together in one organization people of diverse knowl-edge and skills It needs to be applied to all third-sector institutionssuch as hospitals universities churches arts organizations andsocial service agencies which since World War II have grown fasterin the United States than either business or government For eventhough the need to manage volunteers or raise funds may differen-tiate nonprofit managers from their for-profit peers many more oftheir responsibilities are the samemdashamong them defining the rightstrategy and goals developing people measuring performance andmarketing the organizationrsquos services Management worldwide hasbecome the new social function

Management and Entrepreneurship

One important advance in the discipline and practice of manage-ment is that both now embrace entrepreneurship and innovation Asham fight these days pits ldquomanagementrdquo against ldquoentrepreneur-shiprdquo as adversaries if not as mutually exclusive Thatrsquos like sayingthat the fingering hand and the bow hand of the violinist areldquoadversariesrdquo or ldquomutually exclusiverdquo Both are always needed andat the same time And both have to be coordinated and worktogether Any existing organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital goes down fast if it does not innovateConversely any new organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital collapses if it does not manage Not toinnovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing orga-nizations Not to know how to manage is the single largest reasonfor the failure of new ventures

Yet few management books have paid attention to entrepreneur-ship and innovation One reason is that during the period afterWorld War II when most of those books were written managingthe existing rather than innovating the new and different was thedominant task During this period most institutions developed

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 8

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 9

__ -1__ 0__+1

along lines laid down thirty or fifty years earlier This has nowchanged dramatically We have again entered an era of innovationand it is by no means confined to ldquohigh-techrdquo or to technology gen-erally In fact social innovationmdashas this chapter tries to makeclearmdashmay be of greater importance and have much greater impactthan any scientific or technical invention Furthermore we nowhave a ldquodisciplinerdquo of entrepreneurship and innovation (see myInnovation and Entrepreneurship 1986) It is clearly a part of man-agement and rests indeed on well-known and tested managementprinciples It applies to both existing organizations and new ven-tures and to both business and nonbusiness institutions includinggovernment

The Accountabi l i ty of Management

Management books tend to focus on the function of managementinside its organization Few yet accept it as a social function But itis precisely because management has become so pervasive as a socialfunction that it faces its most serious challenge To whom is man-agement accountable And for what On what does managementbase its power What gives it legitimacy

These are not business questions or economic questions Theyare political questions Yet they underlie the most serious assault onmanagement in its historymdasha far more serious assault than anymounted by Marxists or labor unions the hostile takeover AnAmerican phenomenon at first it has spread throughout the non-Communist developed world What made it possible was the emer-gence of the employee pension funds as the controlling shareholdersof publicly owned companies The pension funds while legallyldquoownersrdquo are economically ldquoinvestorsrdquomdashand indeed often ldquospecu-latorsrdquo They have no interest in the enterprise and its welfare Infact in the United States at least they are ldquotrusteesrdquo and are notsupposed to consider anything but immediate pecuniary gainWhat underlies the takeover bid is the postulate that the enterprisersquos

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 9

10 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

sole function is to provide the largest possible immediate gain to theshareholder In the absence of any other justification for managementand enterprise the ldquoraiderrdquo with his hostile takeover bid prevailsmdashand only too often immediately dismantles or loots the going con-cern sacrificing long-range wealth-producing capacity to short-termgains

Managementmdashand not only in the business enterprisemdashhas tobe accountable for performance But how is performance to bedefined How is it to be measured How is it to be enforced And towhom should management be accountable That these questionscan be asked is in itself a measure of the success and importance ofmanagement That they need to be asked is however also anindictment of managers They have not yet faced up to the fact thatthey represent powermdashand power has to be accountable has to belegitimate They have not yet faced up to the fact that they matter

What Is Management

But what is management Is it a bag of techniques and tricks Abundle of analytical tools like those taught in business schoolsThese are important to be sure just as thermometer and anatomyare important to the physician But the evolution and history ofmanagementmdashits successes as well as its problemsmdashteach thatmanagement is above all else based on a very few essential princi-ples To be specific

Management is about human beings Its task is to make peo-ple capable of joint performance to make their strengthseffective and their weaknesses irrelevant This is what organi-zation is all about and it is the reason that management is thecritical determining factor These days practically all of uswork for a managed institution large or small business ornonbusiness We depend on management for our livelihoods

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 10

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 11

__ -1__ 0__+1

And our ability to contribute to society also depends as muchon the management of the organization for which we work asit does on our own skills dedication and effort

Because management deals with the integration of people in acommon venture it is deeply embedded in culture Whatmanagers do in West Germany in the United Kingdom inthe United States in Japan or in Brazil is exactly the sameHow they do it may be quite different Thus one of the basicchallenges managers in a developing country face is to findand identify those parts of their own tradition history andculture that can be used as management building blocks Thedifference between Japanrsquos economic success and Indiarsquos rela-tive backwardness is largely explained by the fact thatJapanese managers were able to plant imported managementconcepts in their own cultural soil and make them grow

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals andshared values Without such commitment there is no enter-prise there is only a mob The enterprise must have simpleclear and unifying objectives The mission of the organiza-tion has to be clear enough and big enough to provide com-mon vision The goals that embody it have to be clear publicand constantly reaffirmed Managementrsquos first job is to thinkthrough set and exemplify those objectives values andgoals

Management must also enable the enterprise and each of itsmembers to grow and develop as needs and opportunitieschange Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institu-tion Training and development must be built into it on alllevelsmdashtraining and development that never stop

Every enterprise is composed of people with different skillsand knowledge doing many different kinds of work It mustbe built on communication and on individual responsibilityAll members need to think through what they aim to accom-plishmdashand make sure that their associates know and under-

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 11

12 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

stand that aim All have to think through what they owe toothersmdashand make sure that others understand All have tothink through what they in turn need from othersmdashandmake sure that others know what is expected of them

Neither the quantity of output nor the ldquobottom linerdquo is byitself an adequate measure of the performance of managementand enterprise Market standing innovation productivitydevelopment of people quality financial resultsmdashall are cru-cial to an organizationrsquos performance and to its survival Non-profit institutions too need measurements in a number ofareas specific to their mission Just as a human being needs adiversity of measures to assess his or her health and perfor-mance an organization needs a diversity of measures to assessits health and performance Performance has to be built intothe enterprise and its management it has to be measuredmdashorat least judgedmdashand it has to be continually improved

Finally the single most important thing to remember aboutany enterprise is that results exist only on the outside Theresult of a business is a satisfied customer The result of a hos-pital is a healed patient The result of a school is a studentwho has learned something and puts it to work ten years laterInside an enterprise there are only costs

Managers who understand these principles and function in theirlight will be achieving accomplished managers

Management as a Libera l Ar t

Thirty years ago the English scientist and novelist C P Snowtalked of the ldquotwo culturesrdquo of contemporary society Managementhowever fits neither Snowrsquos ldquohumanistrdquo nor his ldquoscientistrdquo It dealswith action and application and its test is results This makes it atechnology But management also deals with people their valuestheir growth and developmentmdashand this makes it a humanity So

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 12

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 13

__ -1__ 0__+1

does its concern with and impact on social structure and the com-munity Indeed as everyone has learned who like this author hasbeen working with managers of all kinds of institutions for longyears management is deeply involved in moral concernsmdashthenature of man good and evil

Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal artmdashldquoliberalrdquo because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge self-knowledge wisdom and leadership ldquoartrdquo because it is alsoconcerned with practice and application Managers draw on all theknowledges and insights of the humanities and the social sciencesmdashon psychology and philosophy on economics and history onethicsmdashas well as on the physical sciences But they have to focusthis knowledge on effectiveness and resultsmdashon healing a sickpatient teaching a student building a bridge designing and sellinga ldquouser-friendlyrdquo software program

For these reasons management will increasingly be the disci-pline and the practice through which the ldquohumanitiesrdquo will againacquire recognition impact and relevance

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 13

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 14

__ -1__ 0__+1

II

T H E I N D I V I D U A L

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 15

-1__0__

+1__

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 16

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

Business Review (1994) and in the Atlantic Monthly (1996) respec-tively

Chapter 8 was excerpted from The Practice of Management(1954)

Chapter 9 was excerpted from The Frontiers of Management(1986) and was first published in the Harvard Business Review(1985)

Chapters 10 11 12 20 24 were excerpted from Innovation andEntrepreneurship (1985)

Chapters 13 14 16 17 were excerpted from The Effective Exec-utive (1966)

Chapters 22 and 25 were excerpted from Post-Capitalist Society(1993)

All these books are still in print in the United States and inmany other countries

This one-volume edition of The Essential Drucker does nothowever include any excerpts from five important Managementbooks of mine The Future of Industrial Man (1942) Concept of theCorporation (1946) Managing for Results (1964 the first book onwhat is now called ldquostrategyrdquo a term unknown for business fortyyears ago) Managing in Turbulent Times (1980) Managing theNon-Profit Organization (1990) These are important books andstill widely read and used But their subject matter is more special-izedmdashand in some cases also more technicalmdashthan that of thebooks from which the chapters of the present book were chosenmdashand thus had to be left out of a work that calls itself Essential

mdashPeter F DruckerClaremont California

Spring 2001

viii i n t r o d u c t i o n

-1__0__

+1__

13221_Xfmi-xqrk 62601 305 PM Page viii

__ -1__ 0__+1

I

M A N A G E M E N T

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 1

-1__0__

+1__

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 2

When Karl Marx was beginning work on Das Kapital in the1850s the phenomenon of management was unknown So

were the enterprises that managers run The largest manufacturingcompany around was a Manchester cotton mill employing fewerthan three hundred people and owned by Marxrsquos friend and collab-orator Friedrich Engels And in Engelsrsquos millmdashone of the mostprofitable businesses of its daymdashthere were no ldquomanagersrdquo onlyldquocharge handsrdquo who themselves workers enforced discipline over ahandful of fellow ldquoproletariansrdquo

Rarely in human history has any institution emerged as quicklyas management or had as great an impact so fast In less than 150years management has transformed the social and economic fabricof the worldrsquos developed countries It has created a global economyand set new rules for countries that would participate in that econ-omy as equals And it has itself been transformed Few executivesare aware of the tremendous impact management has had Indeed agood many are like M Jourdain the character in Moliegraverersquos Bour-geois Gentilhomme who did not know that he spoke prose Theybarely realize that they practicemdashor mispracticemdashmanagement As

__ -1__ 0__+1

1

management a ssoc ial funct ion and

l iberal art

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 3

4 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

a result they are ill prepared for the tremendous challenges thatnow confront them The truly important problems managers facedo not come from technology or politics they do not originate out-side of management and enterprise They are problems caused bythe very success of management itself

To be sure the fundamental task of management remains thesame to make people capable of joint performance through com-mon goals common values the right structure and the trainingand development they need to perform and to respond to changeBut the very meaning of this task has changed if only because theperformance of management has converted the workforce from onecomposed largely of unskilled laborers to one of highly educatedknowledge workers

The Orig ins and Deve lopment of Management

On the threshold of World War I a few thinkers were just becom-ing aware of managementrsquos existence But few people even in themost advanced countries had anything to do with it Now the largestsingle group in the labor force more than one-third of the total arepeople whom the US Bureau of the Census calls ldquomanagerial andprofessionalrdquo Management has been the main agent of this trans-formation Management explains why for the first time in humanhistory we can employ large numbers of knowledgeable skilledpeople in productive work No earlier society could do thisIndeed no earlier society could support more than a handful ofsuch people Until quite recently no one knew how to put peoplewith different skills and knowledge together to achieve commongoals

Eighteenth-century China was the envy of contemporary West-ern intellectuals because it supplied more jobs for educated peoplethan all of Europe didmdashsome twenty thousand per year Today theUnited States with about the same population China then hadgraduates nearly a million college students a year few of whom have

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 4

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 5

__ -1__ 0__+1

the slightest difficulty finding well-paid employment Managementenables us to employ them

Knowledge especially advanced knowledge is always special-ized By itself it produces nothing Yet a modern business and notonly the largest ones may employ up to ten thousand highly knowl-edgeable people who represent up to sixty different knowledge areasEngineers of all sorts designers marketing experts economistsstatisticians psychologists planners accountants human-resourcespeoplemdashall working together in a joint venture None would beeffective without the managed enterprise

There is no point in asking which came first the educationalexplosion of the last one hundred years or the management that putthis knowledge to productive use Modern management and mod-ern enterprise could not exist without the knowledge base thatdeveloped societies have built But equally it is management andmanagement alone that makes effective all this knowledge andthese knowledgeable people The emergence of management hasconverted knowledge from social ornament and luxury into the truecapital of any economy

Not many business leaders could have predicted this develop-ment back in 1870 when large enterprises were first beginning totake shape The reason was not so much lack of foresight as lack ofprecedent At that time the only large permanent organizationaround was the army Not surprisingly therefore its command-and-control structure became the model for the men who wereputting together transcontinental railroads steel mills modernbanks and department stores The command model with a veryfew at the top giving orders and a great many at the bottom obeyingthem remained the norm for nearly one hundred years But it wasnever as static as its longevity might suggest On the contrary itbegan to change almost at once as specialized knowledge of all sortspoured into enterprise

The first university-trained engineer in manufacturing industrywas hired by Siemens in Germany in 1867mdashhis name wasFriedrich von Hefner-Alteneck Within five years he had built a

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 5

6 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

research department Other specialized departments followed suitBy World War I the standard functions of a manufacturer had beendeveloped research and engineering manufacturing sales financeand accounting and a little later human resources (or personnel)

Even more important for its impact on enterprisemdashand on theworld economy in generalmdashwas another management-directeddevelopment that took place at this time That was the applicationof management to manual work in the form of training The childof wartime necessity training has propelled the transformation ofthe world economy in the last forty years because it allows low-wagecountries to do something that traditional economic theory hadsaid could never be done to become efficientmdashand yet still low-wagemdashcompetitors almost overnight

Adam Smith reported that it took several hundred years for acountry or region to develop a tradition of labor and the expertise inmanual and managerial skills needed to produce and market a givenproduct whether cotton textiles or violins

During World War I however large numbers of unskilledpreindustrial people had to be made productive workers in practi-cally no time To meet this need businesses in the United Statesand the United Kingdom began to apply the theory of scientificmanagement developed by Frederick W Taylor between 1885 and1910 to the systematic training of blue-collar workers on a largescale They analyzed tasks and broke them down into individualunskilled operations that could then be learned quite quickly Fur-ther developed in World War II training was then picked up by theJapanese and twenty years later by the South Koreans who madeit the basis for their countriesrsquo phenomenal development

During the 1920s and 1930s management was applied to manymore areas and aspects of the manufacturing business Decentraliza-tion for instance arose to combine the advantages of bigness andthe advantages of smallness within one enterprise Accounting wentfrom ldquobookkeepingrdquo to analysis and control Planning grew out ofthe ldquoGantt chartsrdquo designed in 1917 and 1918 to plan war produc-tion and so did the use of analytical logic and statistics which

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 6

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 7

__ -1__ 0__+1

employ quantification to convert experience and intuition into def-initions information and diagnosis Marketing evolved as a resultof applying management concepts to distribution and sellingMoreover as early as the mid-1920s and early 1930s some Ameri-can management pioneers such as Thomas Watson Sr at thefledgling IBM Robert E Wood at Sears Roebuck and GeorgeElton Mayo at the Harvard Business School began to question theway manufacturing was organized They concluded that the assem-bly line was a short-term compromise Despite its tremendous pro-ductivity it was poor economics because of its inflexibility poor useof human resources even poor engineering They began the think-ing and experimenting that eventually led to ldquoautomationrdquo as theway to organize the manufacturing process and to teamwork qual-ity circles and the information-based organization as the way tomanage human resources Every one of these managerial innova-tions represented the application of knowledge to work the substi-tution of system and information for guesswork brawn and toilEvery one to use Frederick Taylorrsquos term replaced ldquoworkingharderrdquo with ldquoworking smarterrdquo

The powerful effect of these changes became apparent duringWorld War II To the very end the Germans were by far the betterstrategists Having much shorter interior lines they needed fewersupport troops and could match their opponents in combatstrength Yet the Allies wonmdashtheir victory achieved by manage-ment The United States with one-fifth the population of all theother belligerents combined had almost as many men in uniformYet it produced more war materieacutel than all the others takentogether It managed to transport the stuff to fighting fronts as farapart as China Russia India Africa and Western Europe Nowonder then that by the warrsquos end almost all the world hadbecome management-conscious Or that management emerged as arecognizably distinct kind of work one that could be studied anddeveloped into a disciplinemdashas happened in each country that hasenjoyed economic leadership during the postwar period

After World War II we began to see that management is not

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 7

8 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

exclusively business management It pertains to every human effortthat brings together in one organization people of diverse knowl-edge and skills It needs to be applied to all third-sector institutionssuch as hospitals universities churches arts organizations andsocial service agencies which since World War II have grown fasterin the United States than either business or government For eventhough the need to manage volunteers or raise funds may differen-tiate nonprofit managers from their for-profit peers many more oftheir responsibilities are the samemdashamong them defining the rightstrategy and goals developing people measuring performance andmarketing the organizationrsquos services Management worldwide hasbecome the new social function

Management and Entrepreneurship

One important advance in the discipline and practice of manage-ment is that both now embrace entrepreneurship and innovation Asham fight these days pits ldquomanagementrdquo against ldquoentrepreneur-shiprdquo as adversaries if not as mutually exclusive Thatrsquos like sayingthat the fingering hand and the bow hand of the violinist areldquoadversariesrdquo or ldquomutually exclusiverdquo Both are always needed andat the same time And both have to be coordinated and worktogether Any existing organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital goes down fast if it does not innovateConversely any new organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital collapses if it does not manage Not toinnovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing orga-nizations Not to know how to manage is the single largest reasonfor the failure of new ventures

Yet few management books have paid attention to entrepreneur-ship and innovation One reason is that during the period afterWorld War II when most of those books were written managingthe existing rather than innovating the new and different was thedominant task During this period most institutions developed

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 8

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 9

__ -1__ 0__+1

along lines laid down thirty or fifty years earlier This has nowchanged dramatically We have again entered an era of innovationand it is by no means confined to ldquohigh-techrdquo or to technology gen-erally In fact social innovationmdashas this chapter tries to makeclearmdashmay be of greater importance and have much greater impactthan any scientific or technical invention Furthermore we nowhave a ldquodisciplinerdquo of entrepreneurship and innovation (see myInnovation and Entrepreneurship 1986) It is clearly a part of man-agement and rests indeed on well-known and tested managementprinciples It applies to both existing organizations and new ven-tures and to both business and nonbusiness institutions includinggovernment

The Accountabi l i ty of Management

Management books tend to focus on the function of managementinside its organization Few yet accept it as a social function But itis precisely because management has become so pervasive as a socialfunction that it faces its most serious challenge To whom is man-agement accountable And for what On what does managementbase its power What gives it legitimacy

These are not business questions or economic questions Theyare political questions Yet they underlie the most serious assault onmanagement in its historymdasha far more serious assault than anymounted by Marxists or labor unions the hostile takeover AnAmerican phenomenon at first it has spread throughout the non-Communist developed world What made it possible was the emer-gence of the employee pension funds as the controlling shareholdersof publicly owned companies The pension funds while legallyldquoownersrdquo are economically ldquoinvestorsrdquomdashand indeed often ldquospecu-latorsrdquo They have no interest in the enterprise and its welfare Infact in the United States at least they are ldquotrusteesrdquo and are notsupposed to consider anything but immediate pecuniary gainWhat underlies the takeover bid is the postulate that the enterprisersquos

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 9

10 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

sole function is to provide the largest possible immediate gain to theshareholder In the absence of any other justification for managementand enterprise the ldquoraiderrdquo with his hostile takeover bid prevailsmdashand only too often immediately dismantles or loots the going con-cern sacrificing long-range wealth-producing capacity to short-termgains

Managementmdashand not only in the business enterprisemdashhas tobe accountable for performance But how is performance to bedefined How is it to be measured How is it to be enforced And towhom should management be accountable That these questionscan be asked is in itself a measure of the success and importance ofmanagement That they need to be asked is however also anindictment of managers They have not yet faced up to the fact thatthey represent powermdashand power has to be accountable has to belegitimate They have not yet faced up to the fact that they matter

What Is Management

But what is management Is it a bag of techniques and tricks Abundle of analytical tools like those taught in business schoolsThese are important to be sure just as thermometer and anatomyare important to the physician But the evolution and history ofmanagementmdashits successes as well as its problemsmdashteach thatmanagement is above all else based on a very few essential princi-ples To be specific

Management is about human beings Its task is to make peo-ple capable of joint performance to make their strengthseffective and their weaknesses irrelevant This is what organi-zation is all about and it is the reason that management is thecritical determining factor These days practically all of uswork for a managed institution large or small business ornonbusiness We depend on management for our livelihoods

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 10

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 11

__ -1__ 0__+1

And our ability to contribute to society also depends as muchon the management of the organization for which we work asit does on our own skills dedication and effort

Because management deals with the integration of people in acommon venture it is deeply embedded in culture Whatmanagers do in West Germany in the United Kingdom inthe United States in Japan or in Brazil is exactly the sameHow they do it may be quite different Thus one of the basicchallenges managers in a developing country face is to findand identify those parts of their own tradition history andculture that can be used as management building blocks Thedifference between Japanrsquos economic success and Indiarsquos rela-tive backwardness is largely explained by the fact thatJapanese managers were able to plant imported managementconcepts in their own cultural soil and make them grow

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals andshared values Without such commitment there is no enter-prise there is only a mob The enterprise must have simpleclear and unifying objectives The mission of the organiza-tion has to be clear enough and big enough to provide com-mon vision The goals that embody it have to be clear publicand constantly reaffirmed Managementrsquos first job is to thinkthrough set and exemplify those objectives values andgoals

Management must also enable the enterprise and each of itsmembers to grow and develop as needs and opportunitieschange Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institu-tion Training and development must be built into it on alllevelsmdashtraining and development that never stop

Every enterprise is composed of people with different skillsand knowledge doing many different kinds of work It mustbe built on communication and on individual responsibilityAll members need to think through what they aim to accom-plishmdashand make sure that their associates know and under-

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 11

12 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

stand that aim All have to think through what they owe toothersmdashand make sure that others understand All have tothink through what they in turn need from othersmdashandmake sure that others know what is expected of them

Neither the quantity of output nor the ldquobottom linerdquo is byitself an adequate measure of the performance of managementand enterprise Market standing innovation productivitydevelopment of people quality financial resultsmdashall are cru-cial to an organizationrsquos performance and to its survival Non-profit institutions too need measurements in a number ofareas specific to their mission Just as a human being needs adiversity of measures to assess his or her health and perfor-mance an organization needs a diversity of measures to assessits health and performance Performance has to be built intothe enterprise and its management it has to be measuredmdashorat least judgedmdashand it has to be continually improved

Finally the single most important thing to remember aboutany enterprise is that results exist only on the outside Theresult of a business is a satisfied customer The result of a hos-pital is a healed patient The result of a school is a studentwho has learned something and puts it to work ten years laterInside an enterprise there are only costs

Managers who understand these principles and function in theirlight will be achieving accomplished managers

Management as a Libera l Ar t

Thirty years ago the English scientist and novelist C P Snowtalked of the ldquotwo culturesrdquo of contemporary society Managementhowever fits neither Snowrsquos ldquohumanistrdquo nor his ldquoscientistrdquo It dealswith action and application and its test is results This makes it atechnology But management also deals with people their valuestheir growth and developmentmdashand this makes it a humanity So

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 12

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 13

__ -1__ 0__+1

does its concern with and impact on social structure and the com-munity Indeed as everyone has learned who like this author hasbeen working with managers of all kinds of institutions for longyears management is deeply involved in moral concernsmdashthenature of man good and evil

Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal artmdashldquoliberalrdquo because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge self-knowledge wisdom and leadership ldquoartrdquo because it is alsoconcerned with practice and application Managers draw on all theknowledges and insights of the humanities and the social sciencesmdashon psychology and philosophy on economics and history onethicsmdashas well as on the physical sciences But they have to focusthis knowledge on effectiveness and resultsmdashon healing a sickpatient teaching a student building a bridge designing and sellinga ldquouser-friendlyrdquo software program

For these reasons management will increasingly be the disci-pline and the practice through which the ldquohumanitiesrdquo will againacquire recognition impact and relevance

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 13

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 14

__ -1__ 0__+1

II

T H E I N D I V I D U A L

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 15

-1__0__

+1__

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 16

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

__ -1__ 0__+1

I

M A N A G E M E N T

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 1

-1__0__

+1__

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 2

When Karl Marx was beginning work on Das Kapital in the1850s the phenomenon of management was unknown So

were the enterprises that managers run The largest manufacturingcompany around was a Manchester cotton mill employing fewerthan three hundred people and owned by Marxrsquos friend and collab-orator Friedrich Engels And in Engelsrsquos millmdashone of the mostprofitable businesses of its daymdashthere were no ldquomanagersrdquo onlyldquocharge handsrdquo who themselves workers enforced discipline over ahandful of fellow ldquoproletariansrdquo

Rarely in human history has any institution emerged as quicklyas management or had as great an impact so fast In less than 150years management has transformed the social and economic fabricof the worldrsquos developed countries It has created a global economyand set new rules for countries that would participate in that econ-omy as equals And it has itself been transformed Few executivesare aware of the tremendous impact management has had Indeed agood many are like M Jourdain the character in Moliegraverersquos Bour-geois Gentilhomme who did not know that he spoke prose Theybarely realize that they practicemdashor mispracticemdashmanagement As

__ -1__ 0__+1

1

management a ssoc ial funct ion and

l iberal art

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 3

4 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

a result they are ill prepared for the tremendous challenges thatnow confront them The truly important problems managers facedo not come from technology or politics they do not originate out-side of management and enterprise They are problems caused bythe very success of management itself

To be sure the fundamental task of management remains thesame to make people capable of joint performance through com-mon goals common values the right structure and the trainingand development they need to perform and to respond to changeBut the very meaning of this task has changed if only because theperformance of management has converted the workforce from onecomposed largely of unskilled laborers to one of highly educatedknowledge workers

The Orig ins and Deve lopment of Management

On the threshold of World War I a few thinkers were just becom-ing aware of managementrsquos existence But few people even in themost advanced countries had anything to do with it Now the largestsingle group in the labor force more than one-third of the total arepeople whom the US Bureau of the Census calls ldquomanagerial andprofessionalrdquo Management has been the main agent of this trans-formation Management explains why for the first time in humanhistory we can employ large numbers of knowledgeable skilledpeople in productive work No earlier society could do thisIndeed no earlier society could support more than a handful ofsuch people Until quite recently no one knew how to put peoplewith different skills and knowledge together to achieve commongoals

Eighteenth-century China was the envy of contemporary West-ern intellectuals because it supplied more jobs for educated peoplethan all of Europe didmdashsome twenty thousand per year Today theUnited States with about the same population China then hadgraduates nearly a million college students a year few of whom have

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 4

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 5

__ -1__ 0__+1

the slightest difficulty finding well-paid employment Managementenables us to employ them

Knowledge especially advanced knowledge is always special-ized By itself it produces nothing Yet a modern business and notonly the largest ones may employ up to ten thousand highly knowl-edgeable people who represent up to sixty different knowledge areasEngineers of all sorts designers marketing experts economistsstatisticians psychologists planners accountants human-resourcespeoplemdashall working together in a joint venture None would beeffective without the managed enterprise

There is no point in asking which came first the educationalexplosion of the last one hundred years or the management that putthis knowledge to productive use Modern management and mod-ern enterprise could not exist without the knowledge base thatdeveloped societies have built But equally it is management andmanagement alone that makes effective all this knowledge andthese knowledgeable people The emergence of management hasconverted knowledge from social ornament and luxury into the truecapital of any economy

Not many business leaders could have predicted this develop-ment back in 1870 when large enterprises were first beginning totake shape The reason was not so much lack of foresight as lack ofprecedent At that time the only large permanent organizationaround was the army Not surprisingly therefore its command-and-control structure became the model for the men who wereputting together transcontinental railroads steel mills modernbanks and department stores The command model with a veryfew at the top giving orders and a great many at the bottom obeyingthem remained the norm for nearly one hundred years But it wasnever as static as its longevity might suggest On the contrary itbegan to change almost at once as specialized knowledge of all sortspoured into enterprise

The first university-trained engineer in manufacturing industrywas hired by Siemens in Germany in 1867mdashhis name wasFriedrich von Hefner-Alteneck Within five years he had built a

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 5

6 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

research department Other specialized departments followed suitBy World War I the standard functions of a manufacturer had beendeveloped research and engineering manufacturing sales financeand accounting and a little later human resources (or personnel)

Even more important for its impact on enterprisemdashand on theworld economy in generalmdashwas another management-directeddevelopment that took place at this time That was the applicationof management to manual work in the form of training The childof wartime necessity training has propelled the transformation ofthe world economy in the last forty years because it allows low-wagecountries to do something that traditional economic theory hadsaid could never be done to become efficientmdashand yet still low-wagemdashcompetitors almost overnight

Adam Smith reported that it took several hundred years for acountry or region to develop a tradition of labor and the expertise inmanual and managerial skills needed to produce and market a givenproduct whether cotton textiles or violins

During World War I however large numbers of unskilledpreindustrial people had to be made productive workers in practi-cally no time To meet this need businesses in the United Statesand the United Kingdom began to apply the theory of scientificmanagement developed by Frederick W Taylor between 1885 and1910 to the systematic training of blue-collar workers on a largescale They analyzed tasks and broke them down into individualunskilled operations that could then be learned quite quickly Fur-ther developed in World War II training was then picked up by theJapanese and twenty years later by the South Koreans who madeit the basis for their countriesrsquo phenomenal development

During the 1920s and 1930s management was applied to manymore areas and aspects of the manufacturing business Decentraliza-tion for instance arose to combine the advantages of bigness andthe advantages of smallness within one enterprise Accounting wentfrom ldquobookkeepingrdquo to analysis and control Planning grew out ofthe ldquoGantt chartsrdquo designed in 1917 and 1918 to plan war produc-tion and so did the use of analytical logic and statistics which

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 6

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 7

__ -1__ 0__+1

employ quantification to convert experience and intuition into def-initions information and diagnosis Marketing evolved as a resultof applying management concepts to distribution and sellingMoreover as early as the mid-1920s and early 1930s some Ameri-can management pioneers such as Thomas Watson Sr at thefledgling IBM Robert E Wood at Sears Roebuck and GeorgeElton Mayo at the Harvard Business School began to question theway manufacturing was organized They concluded that the assem-bly line was a short-term compromise Despite its tremendous pro-ductivity it was poor economics because of its inflexibility poor useof human resources even poor engineering They began the think-ing and experimenting that eventually led to ldquoautomationrdquo as theway to organize the manufacturing process and to teamwork qual-ity circles and the information-based organization as the way tomanage human resources Every one of these managerial innova-tions represented the application of knowledge to work the substi-tution of system and information for guesswork brawn and toilEvery one to use Frederick Taylorrsquos term replaced ldquoworkingharderrdquo with ldquoworking smarterrdquo

The powerful effect of these changes became apparent duringWorld War II To the very end the Germans were by far the betterstrategists Having much shorter interior lines they needed fewersupport troops and could match their opponents in combatstrength Yet the Allies wonmdashtheir victory achieved by manage-ment The United States with one-fifth the population of all theother belligerents combined had almost as many men in uniformYet it produced more war materieacutel than all the others takentogether It managed to transport the stuff to fighting fronts as farapart as China Russia India Africa and Western Europe Nowonder then that by the warrsquos end almost all the world hadbecome management-conscious Or that management emerged as arecognizably distinct kind of work one that could be studied anddeveloped into a disciplinemdashas happened in each country that hasenjoyed economic leadership during the postwar period

After World War II we began to see that management is not

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 7

8 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

exclusively business management It pertains to every human effortthat brings together in one organization people of diverse knowl-edge and skills It needs to be applied to all third-sector institutionssuch as hospitals universities churches arts organizations andsocial service agencies which since World War II have grown fasterin the United States than either business or government For eventhough the need to manage volunteers or raise funds may differen-tiate nonprofit managers from their for-profit peers many more oftheir responsibilities are the samemdashamong them defining the rightstrategy and goals developing people measuring performance andmarketing the organizationrsquos services Management worldwide hasbecome the new social function

Management and Entrepreneurship

One important advance in the discipline and practice of manage-ment is that both now embrace entrepreneurship and innovation Asham fight these days pits ldquomanagementrdquo against ldquoentrepreneur-shiprdquo as adversaries if not as mutually exclusive Thatrsquos like sayingthat the fingering hand and the bow hand of the violinist areldquoadversariesrdquo or ldquomutually exclusiverdquo Both are always needed andat the same time And both have to be coordinated and worktogether Any existing organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital goes down fast if it does not innovateConversely any new organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital collapses if it does not manage Not toinnovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing orga-nizations Not to know how to manage is the single largest reasonfor the failure of new ventures

Yet few management books have paid attention to entrepreneur-ship and innovation One reason is that during the period afterWorld War II when most of those books were written managingthe existing rather than innovating the new and different was thedominant task During this period most institutions developed

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 8

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 9

__ -1__ 0__+1

along lines laid down thirty or fifty years earlier This has nowchanged dramatically We have again entered an era of innovationand it is by no means confined to ldquohigh-techrdquo or to technology gen-erally In fact social innovationmdashas this chapter tries to makeclearmdashmay be of greater importance and have much greater impactthan any scientific or technical invention Furthermore we nowhave a ldquodisciplinerdquo of entrepreneurship and innovation (see myInnovation and Entrepreneurship 1986) It is clearly a part of man-agement and rests indeed on well-known and tested managementprinciples It applies to both existing organizations and new ven-tures and to both business and nonbusiness institutions includinggovernment

The Accountabi l i ty of Management

Management books tend to focus on the function of managementinside its organization Few yet accept it as a social function But itis precisely because management has become so pervasive as a socialfunction that it faces its most serious challenge To whom is man-agement accountable And for what On what does managementbase its power What gives it legitimacy

These are not business questions or economic questions Theyare political questions Yet they underlie the most serious assault onmanagement in its historymdasha far more serious assault than anymounted by Marxists or labor unions the hostile takeover AnAmerican phenomenon at first it has spread throughout the non-Communist developed world What made it possible was the emer-gence of the employee pension funds as the controlling shareholdersof publicly owned companies The pension funds while legallyldquoownersrdquo are economically ldquoinvestorsrdquomdashand indeed often ldquospecu-latorsrdquo They have no interest in the enterprise and its welfare Infact in the United States at least they are ldquotrusteesrdquo and are notsupposed to consider anything but immediate pecuniary gainWhat underlies the takeover bid is the postulate that the enterprisersquos

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 9

10 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

sole function is to provide the largest possible immediate gain to theshareholder In the absence of any other justification for managementand enterprise the ldquoraiderrdquo with his hostile takeover bid prevailsmdashand only too often immediately dismantles or loots the going con-cern sacrificing long-range wealth-producing capacity to short-termgains

Managementmdashand not only in the business enterprisemdashhas tobe accountable for performance But how is performance to bedefined How is it to be measured How is it to be enforced And towhom should management be accountable That these questionscan be asked is in itself a measure of the success and importance ofmanagement That they need to be asked is however also anindictment of managers They have not yet faced up to the fact thatthey represent powermdashand power has to be accountable has to belegitimate They have not yet faced up to the fact that they matter

What Is Management

But what is management Is it a bag of techniques and tricks Abundle of analytical tools like those taught in business schoolsThese are important to be sure just as thermometer and anatomyare important to the physician But the evolution and history ofmanagementmdashits successes as well as its problemsmdashteach thatmanagement is above all else based on a very few essential princi-ples To be specific

Management is about human beings Its task is to make peo-ple capable of joint performance to make their strengthseffective and their weaknesses irrelevant This is what organi-zation is all about and it is the reason that management is thecritical determining factor These days practically all of uswork for a managed institution large or small business ornonbusiness We depend on management for our livelihoods

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 10

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 11

__ -1__ 0__+1

And our ability to contribute to society also depends as muchon the management of the organization for which we work asit does on our own skills dedication and effort

Because management deals with the integration of people in acommon venture it is deeply embedded in culture Whatmanagers do in West Germany in the United Kingdom inthe United States in Japan or in Brazil is exactly the sameHow they do it may be quite different Thus one of the basicchallenges managers in a developing country face is to findand identify those parts of their own tradition history andculture that can be used as management building blocks Thedifference between Japanrsquos economic success and Indiarsquos rela-tive backwardness is largely explained by the fact thatJapanese managers were able to plant imported managementconcepts in their own cultural soil and make them grow

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals andshared values Without such commitment there is no enter-prise there is only a mob The enterprise must have simpleclear and unifying objectives The mission of the organiza-tion has to be clear enough and big enough to provide com-mon vision The goals that embody it have to be clear publicand constantly reaffirmed Managementrsquos first job is to thinkthrough set and exemplify those objectives values andgoals

Management must also enable the enterprise and each of itsmembers to grow and develop as needs and opportunitieschange Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institu-tion Training and development must be built into it on alllevelsmdashtraining and development that never stop

Every enterprise is composed of people with different skillsand knowledge doing many different kinds of work It mustbe built on communication and on individual responsibilityAll members need to think through what they aim to accom-plishmdashand make sure that their associates know and under-

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 11

12 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

stand that aim All have to think through what they owe toothersmdashand make sure that others understand All have tothink through what they in turn need from othersmdashandmake sure that others know what is expected of them

Neither the quantity of output nor the ldquobottom linerdquo is byitself an adequate measure of the performance of managementand enterprise Market standing innovation productivitydevelopment of people quality financial resultsmdashall are cru-cial to an organizationrsquos performance and to its survival Non-profit institutions too need measurements in a number ofareas specific to their mission Just as a human being needs adiversity of measures to assess his or her health and perfor-mance an organization needs a diversity of measures to assessits health and performance Performance has to be built intothe enterprise and its management it has to be measuredmdashorat least judgedmdashand it has to be continually improved

Finally the single most important thing to remember aboutany enterprise is that results exist only on the outside Theresult of a business is a satisfied customer The result of a hos-pital is a healed patient The result of a school is a studentwho has learned something and puts it to work ten years laterInside an enterprise there are only costs

Managers who understand these principles and function in theirlight will be achieving accomplished managers

Management as a Libera l Ar t

Thirty years ago the English scientist and novelist C P Snowtalked of the ldquotwo culturesrdquo of contemporary society Managementhowever fits neither Snowrsquos ldquohumanistrdquo nor his ldquoscientistrdquo It dealswith action and application and its test is results This makes it atechnology But management also deals with people their valuestheir growth and developmentmdashand this makes it a humanity So

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 12

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 13

__ -1__ 0__+1

does its concern with and impact on social structure and the com-munity Indeed as everyone has learned who like this author hasbeen working with managers of all kinds of institutions for longyears management is deeply involved in moral concernsmdashthenature of man good and evil

Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal artmdashldquoliberalrdquo because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge self-knowledge wisdom and leadership ldquoartrdquo because it is alsoconcerned with practice and application Managers draw on all theknowledges and insights of the humanities and the social sciencesmdashon psychology and philosophy on economics and history onethicsmdashas well as on the physical sciences But they have to focusthis knowledge on effectiveness and resultsmdashon healing a sickpatient teaching a student building a bridge designing and sellinga ldquouser-friendlyrdquo software program

For these reasons management will increasingly be the disci-pline and the practice through which the ldquohumanitiesrdquo will againacquire recognition impact and relevance

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 13

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 14

__ -1__ 0__+1

II

T H E I N D I V I D U A L

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 15

-1__0__

+1__

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 16

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

-1__0__

+1__

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 2

When Karl Marx was beginning work on Das Kapital in the1850s the phenomenon of management was unknown So

were the enterprises that managers run The largest manufacturingcompany around was a Manchester cotton mill employing fewerthan three hundred people and owned by Marxrsquos friend and collab-orator Friedrich Engels And in Engelsrsquos millmdashone of the mostprofitable businesses of its daymdashthere were no ldquomanagersrdquo onlyldquocharge handsrdquo who themselves workers enforced discipline over ahandful of fellow ldquoproletariansrdquo

Rarely in human history has any institution emerged as quicklyas management or had as great an impact so fast In less than 150years management has transformed the social and economic fabricof the worldrsquos developed countries It has created a global economyand set new rules for countries that would participate in that econ-omy as equals And it has itself been transformed Few executivesare aware of the tremendous impact management has had Indeed agood many are like M Jourdain the character in Moliegraverersquos Bour-geois Gentilhomme who did not know that he spoke prose Theybarely realize that they practicemdashor mispracticemdashmanagement As

__ -1__ 0__+1

1

management a ssoc ial funct ion and

l iberal art

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 3

4 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

a result they are ill prepared for the tremendous challenges thatnow confront them The truly important problems managers facedo not come from technology or politics they do not originate out-side of management and enterprise They are problems caused bythe very success of management itself

To be sure the fundamental task of management remains thesame to make people capable of joint performance through com-mon goals common values the right structure and the trainingand development they need to perform and to respond to changeBut the very meaning of this task has changed if only because theperformance of management has converted the workforce from onecomposed largely of unskilled laborers to one of highly educatedknowledge workers

The Orig ins and Deve lopment of Management

On the threshold of World War I a few thinkers were just becom-ing aware of managementrsquos existence But few people even in themost advanced countries had anything to do with it Now the largestsingle group in the labor force more than one-third of the total arepeople whom the US Bureau of the Census calls ldquomanagerial andprofessionalrdquo Management has been the main agent of this trans-formation Management explains why for the first time in humanhistory we can employ large numbers of knowledgeable skilledpeople in productive work No earlier society could do thisIndeed no earlier society could support more than a handful ofsuch people Until quite recently no one knew how to put peoplewith different skills and knowledge together to achieve commongoals

Eighteenth-century China was the envy of contemporary West-ern intellectuals because it supplied more jobs for educated peoplethan all of Europe didmdashsome twenty thousand per year Today theUnited States with about the same population China then hadgraduates nearly a million college students a year few of whom have

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 4

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 5

__ -1__ 0__+1

the slightest difficulty finding well-paid employment Managementenables us to employ them

Knowledge especially advanced knowledge is always special-ized By itself it produces nothing Yet a modern business and notonly the largest ones may employ up to ten thousand highly knowl-edgeable people who represent up to sixty different knowledge areasEngineers of all sorts designers marketing experts economistsstatisticians psychologists planners accountants human-resourcespeoplemdashall working together in a joint venture None would beeffective without the managed enterprise

There is no point in asking which came first the educationalexplosion of the last one hundred years or the management that putthis knowledge to productive use Modern management and mod-ern enterprise could not exist without the knowledge base thatdeveloped societies have built But equally it is management andmanagement alone that makes effective all this knowledge andthese knowledgeable people The emergence of management hasconverted knowledge from social ornament and luxury into the truecapital of any economy

Not many business leaders could have predicted this develop-ment back in 1870 when large enterprises were first beginning totake shape The reason was not so much lack of foresight as lack ofprecedent At that time the only large permanent organizationaround was the army Not surprisingly therefore its command-and-control structure became the model for the men who wereputting together transcontinental railroads steel mills modernbanks and department stores The command model with a veryfew at the top giving orders and a great many at the bottom obeyingthem remained the norm for nearly one hundred years But it wasnever as static as its longevity might suggest On the contrary itbegan to change almost at once as specialized knowledge of all sortspoured into enterprise

The first university-trained engineer in manufacturing industrywas hired by Siemens in Germany in 1867mdashhis name wasFriedrich von Hefner-Alteneck Within five years he had built a

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 5

6 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

research department Other specialized departments followed suitBy World War I the standard functions of a manufacturer had beendeveloped research and engineering manufacturing sales financeand accounting and a little later human resources (or personnel)

Even more important for its impact on enterprisemdashand on theworld economy in generalmdashwas another management-directeddevelopment that took place at this time That was the applicationof management to manual work in the form of training The childof wartime necessity training has propelled the transformation ofthe world economy in the last forty years because it allows low-wagecountries to do something that traditional economic theory hadsaid could never be done to become efficientmdashand yet still low-wagemdashcompetitors almost overnight

Adam Smith reported that it took several hundred years for acountry or region to develop a tradition of labor and the expertise inmanual and managerial skills needed to produce and market a givenproduct whether cotton textiles or violins

During World War I however large numbers of unskilledpreindustrial people had to be made productive workers in practi-cally no time To meet this need businesses in the United Statesand the United Kingdom began to apply the theory of scientificmanagement developed by Frederick W Taylor between 1885 and1910 to the systematic training of blue-collar workers on a largescale They analyzed tasks and broke them down into individualunskilled operations that could then be learned quite quickly Fur-ther developed in World War II training was then picked up by theJapanese and twenty years later by the South Koreans who madeit the basis for their countriesrsquo phenomenal development

During the 1920s and 1930s management was applied to manymore areas and aspects of the manufacturing business Decentraliza-tion for instance arose to combine the advantages of bigness andthe advantages of smallness within one enterprise Accounting wentfrom ldquobookkeepingrdquo to analysis and control Planning grew out ofthe ldquoGantt chartsrdquo designed in 1917 and 1918 to plan war produc-tion and so did the use of analytical logic and statistics which

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 6

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 7

__ -1__ 0__+1

employ quantification to convert experience and intuition into def-initions information and diagnosis Marketing evolved as a resultof applying management concepts to distribution and sellingMoreover as early as the mid-1920s and early 1930s some Ameri-can management pioneers such as Thomas Watson Sr at thefledgling IBM Robert E Wood at Sears Roebuck and GeorgeElton Mayo at the Harvard Business School began to question theway manufacturing was organized They concluded that the assem-bly line was a short-term compromise Despite its tremendous pro-ductivity it was poor economics because of its inflexibility poor useof human resources even poor engineering They began the think-ing and experimenting that eventually led to ldquoautomationrdquo as theway to organize the manufacturing process and to teamwork qual-ity circles and the information-based organization as the way tomanage human resources Every one of these managerial innova-tions represented the application of knowledge to work the substi-tution of system and information for guesswork brawn and toilEvery one to use Frederick Taylorrsquos term replaced ldquoworkingharderrdquo with ldquoworking smarterrdquo

The powerful effect of these changes became apparent duringWorld War II To the very end the Germans were by far the betterstrategists Having much shorter interior lines they needed fewersupport troops and could match their opponents in combatstrength Yet the Allies wonmdashtheir victory achieved by manage-ment The United States with one-fifth the population of all theother belligerents combined had almost as many men in uniformYet it produced more war materieacutel than all the others takentogether It managed to transport the stuff to fighting fronts as farapart as China Russia India Africa and Western Europe Nowonder then that by the warrsquos end almost all the world hadbecome management-conscious Or that management emerged as arecognizably distinct kind of work one that could be studied anddeveloped into a disciplinemdashas happened in each country that hasenjoyed economic leadership during the postwar period

After World War II we began to see that management is not

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 7

8 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

exclusively business management It pertains to every human effortthat brings together in one organization people of diverse knowl-edge and skills It needs to be applied to all third-sector institutionssuch as hospitals universities churches arts organizations andsocial service agencies which since World War II have grown fasterin the United States than either business or government For eventhough the need to manage volunteers or raise funds may differen-tiate nonprofit managers from their for-profit peers many more oftheir responsibilities are the samemdashamong them defining the rightstrategy and goals developing people measuring performance andmarketing the organizationrsquos services Management worldwide hasbecome the new social function

Management and Entrepreneurship

One important advance in the discipline and practice of manage-ment is that both now embrace entrepreneurship and innovation Asham fight these days pits ldquomanagementrdquo against ldquoentrepreneur-shiprdquo as adversaries if not as mutually exclusive Thatrsquos like sayingthat the fingering hand and the bow hand of the violinist areldquoadversariesrdquo or ldquomutually exclusiverdquo Both are always needed andat the same time And both have to be coordinated and worktogether Any existing organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital goes down fast if it does not innovateConversely any new organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital collapses if it does not manage Not toinnovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing orga-nizations Not to know how to manage is the single largest reasonfor the failure of new ventures

Yet few management books have paid attention to entrepreneur-ship and innovation One reason is that during the period afterWorld War II when most of those books were written managingthe existing rather than innovating the new and different was thedominant task During this period most institutions developed

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 8

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 9

__ -1__ 0__+1

along lines laid down thirty or fifty years earlier This has nowchanged dramatically We have again entered an era of innovationand it is by no means confined to ldquohigh-techrdquo or to technology gen-erally In fact social innovationmdashas this chapter tries to makeclearmdashmay be of greater importance and have much greater impactthan any scientific or technical invention Furthermore we nowhave a ldquodisciplinerdquo of entrepreneurship and innovation (see myInnovation and Entrepreneurship 1986) It is clearly a part of man-agement and rests indeed on well-known and tested managementprinciples It applies to both existing organizations and new ven-tures and to both business and nonbusiness institutions includinggovernment

The Accountabi l i ty of Management

Management books tend to focus on the function of managementinside its organization Few yet accept it as a social function But itis precisely because management has become so pervasive as a socialfunction that it faces its most serious challenge To whom is man-agement accountable And for what On what does managementbase its power What gives it legitimacy

These are not business questions or economic questions Theyare political questions Yet they underlie the most serious assault onmanagement in its historymdasha far more serious assault than anymounted by Marxists or labor unions the hostile takeover AnAmerican phenomenon at first it has spread throughout the non-Communist developed world What made it possible was the emer-gence of the employee pension funds as the controlling shareholdersof publicly owned companies The pension funds while legallyldquoownersrdquo are economically ldquoinvestorsrdquomdashand indeed often ldquospecu-latorsrdquo They have no interest in the enterprise and its welfare Infact in the United States at least they are ldquotrusteesrdquo and are notsupposed to consider anything but immediate pecuniary gainWhat underlies the takeover bid is the postulate that the enterprisersquos

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 9

10 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

sole function is to provide the largest possible immediate gain to theshareholder In the absence of any other justification for managementand enterprise the ldquoraiderrdquo with his hostile takeover bid prevailsmdashand only too often immediately dismantles or loots the going con-cern sacrificing long-range wealth-producing capacity to short-termgains

Managementmdashand not only in the business enterprisemdashhas tobe accountable for performance But how is performance to bedefined How is it to be measured How is it to be enforced And towhom should management be accountable That these questionscan be asked is in itself a measure of the success and importance ofmanagement That they need to be asked is however also anindictment of managers They have not yet faced up to the fact thatthey represent powermdashand power has to be accountable has to belegitimate They have not yet faced up to the fact that they matter

What Is Management

But what is management Is it a bag of techniques and tricks Abundle of analytical tools like those taught in business schoolsThese are important to be sure just as thermometer and anatomyare important to the physician But the evolution and history ofmanagementmdashits successes as well as its problemsmdashteach thatmanagement is above all else based on a very few essential princi-ples To be specific

Management is about human beings Its task is to make peo-ple capable of joint performance to make their strengthseffective and their weaknesses irrelevant This is what organi-zation is all about and it is the reason that management is thecritical determining factor These days practically all of uswork for a managed institution large or small business ornonbusiness We depend on management for our livelihoods

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 10

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 11

__ -1__ 0__+1

And our ability to contribute to society also depends as muchon the management of the organization for which we work asit does on our own skills dedication and effort

Because management deals with the integration of people in acommon venture it is deeply embedded in culture Whatmanagers do in West Germany in the United Kingdom inthe United States in Japan or in Brazil is exactly the sameHow they do it may be quite different Thus one of the basicchallenges managers in a developing country face is to findand identify those parts of their own tradition history andculture that can be used as management building blocks Thedifference between Japanrsquos economic success and Indiarsquos rela-tive backwardness is largely explained by the fact thatJapanese managers were able to plant imported managementconcepts in their own cultural soil and make them grow

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals andshared values Without such commitment there is no enter-prise there is only a mob The enterprise must have simpleclear and unifying objectives The mission of the organiza-tion has to be clear enough and big enough to provide com-mon vision The goals that embody it have to be clear publicand constantly reaffirmed Managementrsquos first job is to thinkthrough set and exemplify those objectives values andgoals

Management must also enable the enterprise and each of itsmembers to grow and develop as needs and opportunitieschange Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institu-tion Training and development must be built into it on alllevelsmdashtraining and development that never stop

Every enterprise is composed of people with different skillsand knowledge doing many different kinds of work It mustbe built on communication and on individual responsibilityAll members need to think through what they aim to accom-plishmdashand make sure that their associates know and under-

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 11

12 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

stand that aim All have to think through what they owe toothersmdashand make sure that others understand All have tothink through what they in turn need from othersmdashandmake sure that others know what is expected of them

Neither the quantity of output nor the ldquobottom linerdquo is byitself an adequate measure of the performance of managementand enterprise Market standing innovation productivitydevelopment of people quality financial resultsmdashall are cru-cial to an organizationrsquos performance and to its survival Non-profit institutions too need measurements in a number ofareas specific to their mission Just as a human being needs adiversity of measures to assess his or her health and perfor-mance an organization needs a diversity of measures to assessits health and performance Performance has to be built intothe enterprise and its management it has to be measuredmdashorat least judgedmdashand it has to be continually improved

Finally the single most important thing to remember aboutany enterprise is that results exist only on the outside Theresult of a business is a satisfied customer The result of a hos-pital is a healed patient The result of a school is a studentwho has learned something and puts it to work ten years laterInside an enterprise there are only costs

Managers who understand these principles and function in theirlight will be achieving accomplished managers

Management as a Libera l Ar t

Thirty years ago the English scientist and novelist C P Snowtalked of the ldquotwo culturesrdquo of contemporary society Managementhowever fits neither Snowrsquos ldquohumanistrdquo nor his ldquoscientistrdquo It dealswith action and application and its test is results This makes it atechnology But management also deals with people their valuestheir growth and developmentmdashand this makes it a humanity So

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 12

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 13

__ -1__ 0__+1

does its concern with and impact on social structure and the com-munity Indeed as everyone has learned who like this author hasbeen working with managers of all kinds of institutions for longyears management is deeply involved in moral concernsmdashthenature of man good and evil

Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal artmdashldquoliberalrdquo because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge self-knowledge wisdom and leadership ldquoartrdquo because it is alsoconcerned with practice and application Managers draw on all theknowledges and insights of the humanities and the social sciencesmdashon psychology and philosophy on economics and history onethicsmdashas well as on the physical sciences But they have to focusthis knowledge on effectiveness and resultsmdashon healing a sickpatient teaching a student building a bridge designing and sellinga ldquouser-friendlyrdquo software program

For these reasons management will increasingly be the disci-pline and the practice through which the ldquohumanitiesrdquo will againacquire recognition impact and relevance

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 13

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 14

__ -1__ 0__+1

II

T H E I N D I V I D U A L

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 15

-1__0__

+1__

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 16

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

When Karl Marx was beginning work on Das Kapital in the1850s the phenomenon of management was unknown So

were the enterprises that managers run The largest manufacturingcompany around was a Manchester cotton mill employing fewerthan three hundred people and owned by Marxrsquos friend and collab-orator Friedrich Engels And in Engelsrsquos millmdashone of the mostprofitable businesses of its daymdashthere were no ldquomanagersrdquo onlyldquocharge handsrdquo who themselves workers enforced discipline over ahandful of fellow ldquoproletariansrdquo

Rarely in human history has any institution emerged as quicklyas management or had as great an impact so fast In less than 150years management has transformed the social and economic fabricof the worldrsquos developed countries It has created a global economyand set new rules for countries that would participate in that econ-omy as equals And it has itself been transformed Few executivesare aware of the tremendous impact management has had Indeed agood many are like M Jourdain the character in Moliegraverersquos Bour-geois Gentilhomme who did not know that he spoke prose Theybarely realize that they practicemdashor mispracticemdashmanagement As

__ -1__ 0__+1

1

management a ssoc ial funct ion and

l iberal art

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 3

4 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

a result they are ill prepared for the tremendous challenges thatnow confront them The truly important problems managers facedo not come from technology or politics they do not originate out-side of management and enterprise They are problems caused bythe very success of management itself

To be sure the fundamental task of management remains thesame to make people capable of joint performance through com-mon goals common values the right structure and the trainingand development they need to perform and to respond to changeBut the very meaning of this task has changed if only because theperformance of management has converted the workforce from onecomposed largely of unskilled laborers to one of highly educatedknowledge workers

The Orig ins and Deve lopment of Management

On the threshold of World War I a few thinkers were just becom-ing aware of managementrsquos existence But few people even in themost advanced countries had anything to do with it Now the largestsingle group in the labor force more than one-third of the total arepeople whom the US Bureau of the Census calls ldquomanagerial andprofessionalrdquo Management has been the main agent of this trans-formation Management explains why for the first time in humanhistory we can employ large numbers of knowledgeable skilledpeople in productive work No earlier society could do thisIndeed no earlier society could support more than a handful ofsuch people Until quite recently no one knew how to put peoplewith different skills and knowledge together to achieve commongoals

Eighteenth-century China was the envy of contemporary West-ern intellectuals because it supplied more jobs for educated peoplethan all of Europe didmdashsome twenty thousand per year Today theUnited States with about the same population China then hadgraduates nearly a million college students a year few of whom have

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 4

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 5

__ -1__ 0__+1

the slightest difficulty finding well-paid employment Managementenables us to employ them

Knowledge especially advanced knowledge is always special-ized By itself it produces nothing Yet a modern business and notonly the largest ones may employ up to ten thousand highly knowl-edgeable people who represent up to sixty different knowledge areasEngineers of all sorts designers marketing experts economistsstatisticians psychologists planners accountants human-resourcespeoplemdashall working together in a joint venture None would beeffective without the managed enterprise

There is no point in asking which came first the educationalexplosion of the last one hundred years or the management that putthis knowledge to productive use Modern management and mod-ern enterprise could not exist without the knowledge base thatdeveloped societies have built But equally it is management andmanagement alone that makes effective all this knowledge andthese knowledgeable people The emergence of management hasconverted knowledge from social ornament and luxury into the truecapital of any economy

Not many business leaders could have predicted this develop-ment back in 1870 when large enterprises were first beginning totake shape The reason was not so much lack of foresight as lack ofprecedent At that time the only large permanent organizationaround was the army Not surprisingly therefore its command-and-control structure became the model for the men who wereputting together transcontinental railroads steel mills modernbanks and department stores The command model with a veryfew at the top giving orders and a great many at the bottom obeyingthem remained the norm for nearly one hundred years But it wasnever as static as its longevity might suggest On the contrary itbegan to change almost at once as specialized knowledge of all sortspoured into enterprise

The first university-trained engineer in manufacturing industrywas hired by Siemens in Germany in 1867mdashhis name wasFriedrich von Hefner-Alteneck Within five years he had built a

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 5

6 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

research department Other specialized departments followed suitBy World War I the standard functions of a manufacturer had beendeveloped research and engineering manufacturing sales financeand accounting and a little later human resources (or personnel)

Even more important for its impact on enterprisemdashand on theworld economy in generalmdashwas another management-directeddevelopment that took place at this time That was the applicationof management to manual work in the form of training The childof wartime necessity training has propelled the transformation ofthe world economy in the last forty years because it allows low-wagecountries to do something that traditional economic theory hadsaid could never be done to become efficientmdashand yet still low-wagemdashcompetitors almost overnight

Adam Smith reported that it took several hundred years for acountry or region to develop a tradition of labor and the expertise inmanual and managerial skills needed to produce and market a givenproduct whether cotton textiles or violins

During World War I however large numbers of unskilledpreindustrial people had to be made productive workers in practi-cally no time To meet this need businesses in the United Statesand the United Kingdom began to apply the theory of scientificmanagement developed by Frederick W Taylor between 1885 and1910 to the systematic training of blue-collar workers on a largescale They analyzed tasks and broke them down into individualunskilled operations that could then be learned quite quickly Fur-ther developed in World War II training was then picked up by theJapanese and twenty years later by the South Koreans who madeit the basis for their countriesrsquo phenomenal development

During the 1920s and 1930s management was applied to manymore areas and aspects of the manufacturing business Decentraliza-tion for instance arose to combine the advantages of bigness andthe advantages of smallness within one enterprise Accounting wentfrom ldquobookkeepingrdquo to analysis and control Planning grew out ofthe ldquoGantt chartsrdquo designed in 1917 and 1918 to plan war produc-tion and so did the use of analytical logic and statistics which

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 6

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 7

__ -1__ 0__+1

employ quantification to convert experience and intuition into def-initions information and diagnosis Marketing evolved as a resultof applying management concepts to distribution and sellingMoreover as early as the mid-1920s and early 1930s some Ameri-can management pioneers such as Thomas Watson Sr at thefledgling IBM Robert E Wood at Sears Roebuck and GeorgeElton Mayo at the Harvard Business School began to question theway manufacturing was organized They concluded that the assem-bly line was a short-term compromise Despite its tremendous pro-ductivity it was poor economics because of its inflexibility poor useof human resources even poor engineering They began the think-ing and experimenting that eventually led to ldquoautomationrdquo as theway to organize the manufacturing process and to teamwork qual-ity circles and the information-based organization as the way tomanage human resources Every one of these managerial innova-tions represented the application of knowledge to work the substi-tution of system and information for guesswork brawn and toilEvery one to use Frederick Taylorrsquos term replaced ldquoworkingharderrdquo with ldquoworking smarterrdquo

The powerful effect of these changes became apparent duringWorld War II To the very end the Germans were by far the betterstrategists Having much shorter interior lines they needed fewersupport troops and could match their opponents in combatstrength Yet the Allies wonmdashtheir victory achieved by manage-ment The United States with one-fifth the population of all theother belligerents combined had almost as many men in uniformYet it produced more war materieacutel than all the others takentogether It managed to transport the stuff to fighting fronts as farapart as China Russia India Africa and Western Europe Nowonder then that by the warrsquos end almost all the world hadbecome management-conscious Or that management emerged as arecognizably distinct kind of work one that could be studied anddeveloped into a disciplinemdashas happened in each country that hasenjoyed economic leadership during the postwar period

After World War II we began to see that management is not

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 7

8 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

exclusively business management It pertains to every human effortthat brings together in one organization people of diverse knowl-edge and skills It needs to be applied to all third-sector institutionssuch as hospitals universities churches arts organizations andsocial service agencies which since World War II have grown fasterin the United States than either business or government For eventhough the need to manage volunteers or raise funds may differen-tiate nonprofit managers from their for-profit peers many more oftheir responsibilities are the samemdashamong them defining the rightstrategy and goals developing people measuring performance andmarketing the organizationrsquos services Management worldwide hasbecome the new social function

Management and Entrepreneurship

One important advance in the discipline and practice of manage-ment is that both now embrace entrepreneurship and innovation Asham fight these days pits ldquomanagementrdquo against ldquoentrepreneur-shiprdquo as adversaries if not as mutually exclusive Thatrsquos like sayingthat the fingering hand and the bow hand of the violinist areldquoadversariesrdquo or ldquomutually exclusiverdquo Both are always needed andat the same time And both have to be coordinated and worktogether Any existing organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital goes down fast if it does not innovateConversely any new organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital collapses if it does not manage Not toinnovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing orga-nizations Not to know how to manage is the single largest reasonfor the failure of new ventures

Yet few management books have paid attention to entrepreneur-ship and innovation One reason is that during the period afterWorld War II when most of those books were written managingthe existing rather than innovating the new and different was thedominant task During this period most institutions developed

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 8

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 9

__ -1__ 0__+1

along lines laid down thirty or fifty years earlier This has nowchanged dramatically We have again entered an era of innovationand it is by no means confined to ldquohigh-techrdquo or to technology gen-erally In fact social innovationmdashas this chapter tries to makeclearmdashmay be of greater importance and have much greater impactthan any scientific or technical invention Furthermore we nowhave a ldquodisciplinerdquo of entrepreneurship and innovation (see myInnovation and Entrepreneurship 1986) It is clearly a part of man-agement and rests indeed on well-known and tested managementprinciples It applies to both existing organizations and new ven-tures and to both business and nonbusiness institutions includinggovernment

The Accountabi l i ty of Management

Management books tend to focus on the function of managementinside its organization Few yet accept it as a social function But itis precisely because management has become so pervasive as a socialfunction that it faces its most serious challenge To whom is man-agement accountable And for what On what does managementbase its power What gives it legitimacy

These are not business questions or economic questions Theyare political questions Yet they underlie the most serious assault onmanagement in its historymdasha far more serious assault than anymounted by Marxists or labor unions the hostile takeover AnAmerican phenomenon at first it has spread throughout the non-Communist developed world What made it possible was the emer-gence of the employee pension funds as the controlling shareholdersof publicly owned companies The pension funds while legallyldquoownersrdquo are economically ldquoinvestorsrdquomdashand indeed often ldquospecu-latorsrdquo They have no interest in the enterprise and its welfare Infact in the United States at least they are ldquotrusteesrdquo and are notsupposed to consider anything but immediate pecuniary gainWhat underlies the takeover bid is the postulate that the enterprisersquos

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 9

10 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

sole function is to provide the largest possible immediate gain to theshareholder In the absence of any other justification for managementand enterprise the ldquoraiderrdquo with his hostile takeover bid prevailsmdashand only too often immediately dismantles or loots the going con-cern sacrificing long-range wealth-producing capacity to short-termgains

Managementmdashand not only in the business enterprisemdashhas tobe accountable for performance But how is performance to bedefined How is it to be measured How is it to be enforced And towhom should management be accountable That these questionscan be asked is in itself a measure of the success and importance ofmanagement That they need to be asked is however also anindictment of managers They have not yet faced up to the fact thatthey represent powermdashand power has to be accountable has to belegitimate They have not yet faced up to the fact that they matter

What Is Management

But what is management Is it a bag of techniques and tricks Abundle of analytical tools like those taught in business schoolsThese are important to be sure just as thermometer and anatomyare important to the physician But the evolution and history ofmanagementmdashits successes as well as its problemsmdashteach thatmanagement is above all else based on a very few essential princi-ples To be specific

Management is about human beings Its task is to make peo-ple capable of joint performance to make their strengthseffective and their weaknesses irrelevant This is what organi-zation is all about and it is the reason that management is thecritical determining factor These days practically all of uswork for a managed institution large or small business ornonbusiness We depend on management for our livelihoods

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 10

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 11

__ -1__ 0__+1

And our ability to contribute to society also depends as muchon the management of the organization for which we work asit does on our own skills dedication and effort

Because management deals with the integration of people in acommon venture it is deeply embedded in culture Whatmanagers do in West Germany in the United Kingdom inthe United States in Japan or in Brazil is exactly the sameHow they do it may be quite different Thus one of the basicchallenges managers in a developing country face is to findand identify those parts of their own tradition history andculture that can be used as management building blocks Thedifference between Japanrsquos economic success and Indiarsquos rela-tive backwardness is largely explained by the fact thatJapanese managers were able to plant imported managementconcepts in their own cultural soil and make them grow

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals andshared values Without such commitment there is no enter-prise there is only a mob The enterprise must have simpleclear and unifying objectives The mission of the organiza-tion has to be clear enough and big enough to provide com-mon vision The goals that embody it have to be clear publicand constantly reaffirmed Managementrsquos first job is to thinkthrough set and exemplify those objectives values andgoals

Management must also enable the enterprise and each of itsmembers to grow and develop as needs and opportunitieschange Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institu-tion Training and development must be built into it on alllevelsmdashtraining and development that never stop

Every enterprise is composed of people with different skillsand knowledge doing many different kinds of work It mustbe built on communication and on individual responsibilityAll members need to think through what they aim to accom-plishmdashand make sure that their associates know and under-

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 11

12 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

stand that aim All have to think through what they owe toothersmdashand make sure that others understand All have tothink through what they in turn need from othersmdashandmake sure that others know what is expected of them

Neither the quantity of output nor the ldquobottom linerdquo is byitself an adequate measure of the performance of managementand enterprise Market standing innovation productivitydevelopment of people quality financial resultsmdashall are cru-cial to an organizationrsquos performance and to its survival Non-profit institutions too need measurements in a number ofareas specific to their mission Just as a human being needs adiversity of measures to assess his or her health and perfor-mance an organization needs a diversity of measures to assessits health and performance Performance has to be built intothe enterprise and its management it has to be measuredmdashorat least judgedmdashand it has to be continually improved

Finally the single most important thing to remember aboutany enterprise is that results exist only on the outside Theresult of a business is a satisfied customer The result of a hos-pital is a healed patient The result of a school is a studentwho has learned something and puts it to work ten years laterInside an enterprise there are only costs

Managers who understand these principles and function in theirlight will be achieving accomplished managers

Management as a Libera l Ar t

Thirty years ago the English scientist and novelist C P Snowtalked of the ldquotwo culturesrdquo of contemporary society Managementhowever fits neither Snowrsquos ldquohumanistrdquo nor his ldquoscientistrdquo It dealswith action and application and its test is results This makes it atechnology But management also deals with people their valuestheir growth and developmentmdashand this makes it a humanity So

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 12

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 13

__ -1__ 0__+1

does its concern with and impact on social structure and the com-munity Indeed as everyone has learned who like this author hasbeen working with managers of all kinds of institutions for longyears management is deeply involved in moral concernsmdashthenature of man good and evil

Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal artmdashldquoliberalrdquo because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge self-knowledge wisdom and leadership ldquoartrdquo because it is alsoconcerned with practice and application Managers draw on all theknowledges and insights of the humanities and the social sciencesmdashon psychology and philosophy on economics and history onethicsmdashas well as on the physical sciences But they have to focusthis knowledge on effectiveness and resultsmdashon healing a sickpatient teaching a student building a bridge designing and sellinga ldquouser-friendlyrdquo software program

For these reasons management will increasingly be the disci-pline and the practice through which the ldquohumanitiesrdquo will againacquire recognition impact and relevance

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 13

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 14

__ -1__ 0__+1

II

T H E I N D I V I D U A L

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 15

-1__0__

+1__

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 16

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

4 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

a result they are ill prepared for the tremendous challenges thatnow confront them The truly important problems managers facedo not come from technology or politics they do not originate out-side of management and enterprise They are problems caused bythe very success of management itself

To be sure the fundamental task of management remains thesame to make people capable of joint performance through com-mon goals common values the right structure and the trainingand development they need to perform and to respond to changeBut the very meaning of this task has changed if only because theperformance of management has converted the workforce from onecomposed largely of unskilled laborers to one of highly educatedknowledge workers

The Orig ins and Deve lopment of Management

On the threshold of World War I a few thinkers were just becom-ing aware of managementrsquos existence But few people even in themost advanced countries had anything to do with it Now the largestsingle group in the labor force more than one-third of the total arepeople whom the US Bureau of the Census calls ldquomanagerial andprofessionalrdquo Management has been the main agent of this trans-formation Management explains why for the first time in humanhistory we can employ large numbers of knowledgeable skilledpeople in productive work No earlier society could do thisIndeed no earlier society could support more than a handful ofsuch people Until quite recently no one knew how to put peoplewith different skills and knowledge together to achieve commongoals

Eighteenth-century China was the envy of contemporary West-ern intellectuals because it supplied more jobs for educated peoplethan all of Europe didmdashsome twenty thousand per year Today theUnited States with about the same population China then hadgraduates nearly a million college students a year few of whom have

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 4

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 5

__ -1__ 0__+1

the slightest difficulty finding well-paid employment Managementenables us to employ them

Knowledge especially advanced knowledge is always special-ized By itself it produces nothing Yet a modern business and notonly the largest ones may employ up to ten thousand highly knowl-edgeable people who represent up to sixty different knowledge areasEngineers of all sorts designers marketing experts economistsstatisticians psychologists planners accountants human-resourcespeoplemdashall working together in a joint venture None would beeffective without the managed enterprise

There is no point in asking which came first the educationalexplosion of the last one hundred years or the management that putthis knowledge to productive use Modern management and mod-ern enterprise could not exist without the knowledge base thatdeveloped societies have built But equally it is management andmanagement alone that makes effective all this knowledge andthese knowledgeable people The emergence of management hasconverted knowledge from social ornament and luxury into the truecapital of any economy

Not many business leaders could have predicted this develop-ment back in 1870 when large enterprises were first beginning totake shape The reason was not so much lack of foresight as lack ofprecedent At that time the only large permanent organizationaround was the army Not surprisingly therefore its command-and-control structure became the model for the men who wereputting together transcontinental railroads steel mills modernbanks and department stores The command model with a veryfew at the top giving orders and a great many at the bottom obeyingthem remained the norm for nearly one hundred years But it wasnever as static as its longevity might suggest On the contrary itbegan to change almost at once as specialized knowledge of all sortspoured into enterprise

The first university-trained engineer in manufacturing industrywas hired by Siemens in Germany in 1867mdashhis name wasFriedrich von Hefner-Alteneck Within five years he had built a

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 5

6 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

research department Other specialized departments followed suitBy World War I the standard functions of a manufacturer had beendeveloped research and engineering manufacturing sales financeand accounting and a little later human resources (or personnel)

Even more important for its impact on enterprisemdashand on theworld economy in generalmdashwas another management-directeddevelopment that took place at this time That was the applicationof management to manual work in the form of training The childof wartime necessity training has propelled the transformation ofthe world economy in the last forty years because it allows low-wagecountries to do something that traditional economic theory hadsaid could never be done to become efficientmdashand yet still low-wagemdashcompetitors almost overnight

Adam Smith reported that it took several hundred years for acountry or region to develop a tradition of labor and the expertise inmanual and managerial skills needed to produce and market a givenproduct whether cotton textiles or violins

During World War I however large numbers of unskilledpreindustrial people had to be made productive workers in practi-cally no time To meet this need businesses in the United Statesand the United Kingdom began to apply the theory of scientificmanagement developed by Frederick W Taylor between 1885 and1910 to the systematic training of blue-collar workers on a largescale They analyzed tasks and broke them down into individualunskilled operations that could then be learned quite quickly Fur-ther developed in World War II training was then picked up by theJapanese and twenty years later by the South Koreans who madeit the basis for their countriesrsquo phenomenal development

During the 1920s and 1930s management was applied to manymore areas and aspects of the manufacturing business Decentraliza-tion for instance arose to combine the advantages of bigness andthe advantages of smallness within one enterprise Accounting wentfrom ldquobookkeepingrdquo to analysis and control Planning grew out ofthe ldquoGantt chartsrdquo designed in 1917 and 1918 to plan war produc-tion and so did the use of analytical logic and statistics which

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 6

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 7

__ -1__ 0__+1

employ quantification to convert experience and intuition into def-initions information and diagnosis Marketing evolved as a resultof applying management concepts to distribution and sellingMoreover as early as the mid-1920s and early 1930s some Ameri-can management pioneers such as Thomas Watson Sr at thefledgling IBM Robert E Wood at Sears Roebuck and GeorgeElton Mayo at the Harvard Business School began to question theway manufacturing was organized They concluded that the assem-bly line was a short-term compromise Despite its tremendous pro-ductivity it was poor economics because of its inflexibility poor useof human resources even poor engineering They began the think-ing and experimenting that eventually led to ldquoautomationrdquo as theway to organize the manufacturing process and to teamwork qual-ity circles and the information-based organization as the way tomanage human resources Every one of these managerial innova-tions represented the application of knowledge to work the substi-tution of system and information for guesswork brawn and toilEvery one to use Frederick Taylorrsquos term replaced ldquoworkingharderrdquo with ldquoworking smarterrdquo

The powerful effect of these changes became apparent duringWorld War II To the very end the Germans were by far the betterstrategists Having much shorter interior lines they needed fewersupport troops and could match their opponents in combatstrength Yet the Allies wonmdashtheir victory achieved by manage-ment The United States with one-fifth the population of all theother belligerents combined had almost as many men in uniformYet it produced more war materieacutel than all the others takentogether It managed to transport the stuff to fighting fronts as farapart as China Russia India Africa and Western Europe Nowonder then that by the warrsquos end almost all the world hadbecome management-conscious Or that management emerged as arecognizably distinct kind of work one that could be studied anddeveloped into a disciplinemdashas happened in each country that hasenjoyed economic leadership during the postwar period

After World War II we began to see that management is not

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 7

8 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

exclusively business management It pertains to every human effortthat brings together in one organization people of diverse knowl-edge and skills It needs to be applied to all third-sector institutionssuch as hospitals universities churches arts organizations andsocial service agencies which since World War II have grown fasterin the United States than either business or government For eventhough the need to manage volunteers or raise funds may differen-tiate nonprofit managers from their for-profit peers many more oftheir responsibilities are the samemdashamong them defining the rightstrategy and goals developing people measuring performance andmarketing the organizationrsquos services Management worldwide hasbecome the new social function

Management and Entrepreneurship

One important advance in the discipline and practice of manage-ment is that both now embrace entrepreneurship and innovation Asham fight these days pits ldquomanagementrdquo against ldquoentrepreneur-shiprdquo as adversaries if not as mutually exclusive Thatrsquos like sayingthat the fingering hand and the bow hand of the violinist areldquoadversariesrdquo or ldquomutually exclusiverdquo Both are always needed andat the same time And both have to be coordinated and worktogether Any existing organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital goes down fast if it does not innovateConversely any new organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital collapses if it does not manage Not toinnovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing orga-nizations Not to know how to manage is the single largest reasonfor the failure of new ventures

Yet few management books have paid attention to entrepreneur-ship and innovation One reason is that during the period afterWorld War II when most of those books were written managingthe existing rather than innovating the new and different was thedominant task During this period most institutions developed

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 8

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 9

__ -1__ 0__+1

along lines laid down thirty or fifty years earlier This has nowchanged dramatically We have again entered an era of innovationand it is by no means confined to ldquohigh-techrdquo or to technology gen-erally In fact social innovationmdashas this chapter tries to makeclearmdashmay be of greater importance and have much greater impactthan any scientific or technical invention Furthermore we nowhave a ldquodisciplinerdquo of entrepreneurship and innovation (see myInnovation and Entrepreneurship 1986) It is clearly a part of man-agement and rests indeed on well-known and tested managementprinciples It applies to both existing organizations and new ven-tures and to both business and nonbusiness institutions includinggovernment

The Accountabi l i ty of Management

Management books tend to focus on the function of managementinside its organization Few yet accept it as a social function But itis precisely because management has become so pervasive as a socialfunction that it faces its most serious challenge To whom is man-agement accountable And for what On what does managementbase its power What gives it legitimacy

These are not business questions or economic questions Theyare political questions Yet they underlie the most serious assault onmanagement in its historymdasha far more serious assault than anymounted by Marxists or labor unions the hostile takeover AnAmerican phenomenon at first it has spread throughout the non-Communist developed world What made it possible was the emer-gence of the employee pension funds as the controlling shareholdersof publicly owned companies The pension funds while legallyldquoownersrdquo are economically ldquoinvestorsrdquomdashand indeed often ldquospecu-latorsrdquo They have no interest in the enterprise and its welfare Infact in the United States at least they are ldquotrusteesrdquo and are notsupposed to consider anything but immediate pecuniary gainWhat underlies the takeover bid is the postulate that the enterprisersquos

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 9

10 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

sole function is to provide the largest possible immediate gain to theshareholder In the absence of any other justification for managementand enterprise the ldquoraiderrdquo with his hostile takeover bid prevailsmdashand only too often immediately dismantles or loots the going con-cern sacrificing long-range wealth-producing capacity to short-termgains

Managementmdashand not only in the business enterprisemdashhas tobe accountable for performance But how is performance to bedefined How is it to be measured How is it to be enforced And towhom should management be accountable That these questionscan be asked is in itself a measure of the success and importance ofmanagement That they need to be asked is however also anindictment of managers They have not yet faced up to the fact thatthey represent powermdashand power has to be accountable has to belegitimate They have not yet faced up to the fact that they matter

What Is Management

But what is management Is it a bag of techniques and tricks Abundle of analytical tools like those taught in business schoolsThese are important to be sure just as thermometer and anatomyare important to the physician But the evolution and history ofmanagementmdashits successes as well as its problemsmdashteach thatmanagement is above all else based on a very few essential princi-ples To be specific

Management is about human beings Its task is to make peo-ple capable of joint performance to make their strengthseffective and their weaknesses irrelevant This is what organi-zation is all about and it is the reason that management is thecritical determining factor These days practically all of uswork for a managed institution large or small business ornonbusiness We depend on management for our livelihoods

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 10

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 11

__ -1__ 0__+1

And our ability to contribute to society also depends as muchon the management of the organization for which we work asit does on our own skills dedication and effort

Because management deals with the integration of people in acommon venture it is deeply embedded in culture Whatmanagers do in West Germany in the United Kingdom inthe United States in Japan or in Brazil is exactly the sameHow they do it may be quite different Thus one of the basicchallenges managers in a developing country face is to findand identify those parts of their own tradition history andculture that can be used as management building blocks Thedifference between Japanrsquos economic success and Indiarsquos rela-tive backwardness is largely explained by the fact thatJapanese managers were able to plant imported managementconcepts in their own cultural soil and make them grow

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals andshared values Without such commitment there is no enter-prise there is only a mob The enterprise must have simpleclear and unifying objectives The mission of the organiza-tion has to be clear enough and big enough to provide com-mon vision The goals that embody it have to be clear publicand constantly reaffirmed Managementrsquos first job is to thinkthrough set and exemplify those objectives values andgoals

Management must also enable the enterprise and each of itsmembers to grow and develop as needs and opportunitieschange Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institu-tion Training and development must be built into it on alllevelsmdashtraining and development that never stop

Every enterprise is composed of people with different skillsand knowledge doing many different kinds of work It mustbe built on communication and on individual responsibilityAll members need to think through what they aim to accom-plishmdashand make sure that their associates know and under-

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 11

12 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

stand that aim All have to think through what they owe toothersmdashand make sure that others understand All have tothink through what they in turn need from othersmdashandmake sure that others know what is expected of them

Neither the quantity of output nor the ldquobottom linerdquo is byitself an adequate measure of the performance of managementand enterprise Market standing innovation productivitydevelopment of people quality financial resultsmdashall are cru-cial to an organizationrsquos performance and to its survival Non-profit institutions too need measurements in a number ofareas specific to their mission Just as a human being needs adiversity of measures to assess his or her health and perfor-mance an organization needs a diversity of measures to assessits health and performance Performance has to be built intothe enterprise and its management it has to be measuredmdashorat least judgedmdashand it has to be continually improved

Finally the single most important thing to remember aboutany enterprise is that results exist only on the outside Theresult of a business is a satisfied customer The result of a hos-pital is a healed patient The result of a school is a studentwho has learned something and puts it to work ten years laterInside an enterprise there are only costs

Managers who understand these principles and function in theirlight will be achieving accomplished managers

Management as a Libera l Ar t

Thirty years ago the English scientist and novelist C P Snowtalked of the ldquotwo culturesrdquo of contemporary society Managementhowever fits neither Snowrsquos ldquohumanistrdquo nor his ldquoscientistrdquo It dealswith action and application and its test is results This makes it atechnology But management also deals with people their valuestheir growth and developmentmdashand this makes it a humanity So

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 12

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 13

__ -1__ 0__+1

does its concern with and impact on social structure and the com-munity Indeed as everyone has learned who like this author hasbeen working with managers of all kinds of institutions for longyears management is deeply involved in moral concernsmdashthenature of man good and evil

Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal artmdashldquoliberalrdquo because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge self-knowledge wisdom and leadership ldquoartrdquo because it is alsoconcerned with practice and application Managers draw on all theknowledges and insights of the humanities and the social sciencesmdashon psychology and philosophy on economics and history onethicsmdashas well as on the physical sciences But they have to focusthis knowledge on effectiveness and resultsmdashon healing a sickpatient teaching a student building a bridge designing and sellinga ldquouser-friendlyrdquo software program

For these reasons management will increasingly be the disci-pline and the practice through which the ldquohumanitiesrdquo will againacquire recognition impact and relevance

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 13

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 14

__ -1__ 0__+1

II

T H E I N D I V I D U A L

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 15

-1__0__

+1__

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 16

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 5

__ -1__ 0__+1

the slightest difficulty finding well-paid employment Managementenables us to employ them

Knowledge especially advanced knowledge is always special-ized By itself it produces nothing Yet a modern business and notonly the largest ones may employ up to ten thousand highly knowl-edgeable people who represent up to sixty different knowledge areasEngineers of all sorts designers marketing experts economistsstatisticians psychologists planners accountants human-resourcespeoplemdashall working together in a joint venture None would beeffective without the managed enterprise

There is no point in asking which came first the educationalexplosion of the last one hundred years or the management that putthis knowledge to productive use Modern management and mod-ern enterprise could not exist without the knowledge base thatdeveloped societies have built But equally it is management andmanagement alone that makes effective all this knowledge andthese knowledgeable people The emergence of management hasconverted knowledge from social ornament and luxury into the truecapital of any economy

Not many business leaders could have predicted this develop-ment back in 1870 when large enterprises were first beginning totake shape The reason was not so much lack of foresight as lack ofprecedent At that time the only large permanent organizationaround was the army Not surprisingly therefore its command-and-control structure became the model for the men who wereputting together transcontinental railroads steel mills modernbanks and department stores The command model with a veryfew at the top giving orders and a great many at the bottom obeyingthem remained the norm for nearly one hundred years But it wasnever as static as its longevity might suggest On the contrary itbegan to change almost at once as specialized knowledge of all sortspoured into enterprise

The first university-trained engineer in manufacturing industrywas hired by Siemens in Germany in 1867mdashhis name wasFriedrich von Hefner-Alteneck Within five years he had built a

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 5

6 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

research department Other specialized departments followed suitBy World War I the standard functions of a manufacturer had beendeveloped research and engineering manufacturing sales financeand accounting and a little later human resources (or personnel)

Even more important for its impact on enterprisemdashand on theworld economy in generalmdashwas another management-directeddevelopment that took place at this time That was the applicationof management to manual work in the form of training The childof wartime necessity training has propelled the transformation ofthe world economy in the last forty years because it allows low-wagecountries to do something that traditional economic theory hadsaid could never be done to become efficientmdashand yet still low-wagemdashcompetitors almost overnight

Adam Smith reported that it took several hundred years for acountry or region to develop a tradition of labor and the expertise inmanual and managerial skills needed to produce and market a givenproduct whether cotton textiles or violins

During World War I however large numbers of unskilledpreindustrial people had to be made productive workers in practi-cally no time To meet this need businesses in the United Statesand the United Kingdom began to apply the theory of scientificmanagement developed by Frederick W Taylor between 1885 and1910 to the systematic training of blue-collar workers on a largescale They analyzed tasks and broke them down into individualunskilled operations that could then be learned quite quickly Fur-ther developed in World War II training was then picked up by theJapanese and twenty years later by the South Koreans who madeit the basis for their countriesrsquo phenomenal development

During the 1920s and 1930s management was applied to manymore areas and aspects of the manufacturing business Decentraliza-tion for instance arose to combine the advantages of bigness andthe advantages of smallness within one enterprise Accounting wentfrom ldquobookkeepingrdquo to analysis and control Planning grew out ofthe ldquoGantt chartsrdquo designed in 1917 and 1918 to plan war produc-tion and so did the use of analytical logic and statistics which

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 6

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 7

__ -1__ 0__+1

employ quantification to convert experience and intuition into def-initions information and diagnosis Marketing evolved as a resultof applying management concepts to distribution and sellingMoreover as early as the mid-1920s and early 1930s some Ameri-can management pioneers such as Thomas Watson Sr at thefledgling IBM Robert E Wood at Sears Roebuck and GeorgeElton Mayo at the Harvard Business School began to question theway manufacturing was organized They concluded that the assem-bly line was a short-term compromise Despite its tremendous pro-ductivity it was poor economics because of its inflexibility poor useof human resources even poor engineering They began the think-ing and experimenting that eventually led to ldquoautomationrdquo as theway to organize the manufacturing process and to teamwork qual-ity circles and the information-based organization as the way tomanage human resources Every one of these managerial innova-tions represented the application of knowledge to work the substi-tution of system and information for guesswork brawn and toilEvery one to use Frederick Taylorrsquos term replaced ldquoworkingharderrdquo with ldquoworking smarterrdquo

The powerful effect of these changes became apparent duringWorld War II To the very end the Germans were by far the betterstrategists Having much shorter interior lines they needed fewersupport troops and could match their opponents in combatstrength Yet the Allies wonmdashtheir victory achieved by manage-ment The United States with one-fifth the population of all theother belligerents combined had almost as many men in uniformYet it produced more war materieacutel than all the others takentogether It managed to transport the stuff to fighting fronts as farapart as China Russia India Africa and Western Europe Nowonder then that by the warrsquos end almost all the world hadbecome management-conscious Or that management emerged as arecognizably distinct kind of work one that could be studied anddeveloped into a disciplinemdashas happened in each country that hasenjoyed economic leadership during the postwar period

After World War II we began to see that management is not

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 7

8 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

exclusively business management It pertains to every human effortthat brings together in one organization people of diverse knowl-edge and skills It needs to be applied to all third-sector institutionssuch as hospitals universities churches arts organizations andsocial service agencies which since World War II have grown fasterin the United States than either business or government For eventhough the need to manage volunteers or raise funds may differen-tiate nonprofit managers from their for-profit peers many more oftheir responsibilities are the samemdashamong them defining the rightstrategy and goals developing people measuring performance andmarketing the organizationrsquos services Management worldwide hasbecome the new social function

Management and Entrepreneurship

One important advance in the discipline and practice of manage-ment is that both now embrace entrepreneurship and innovation Asham fight these days pits ldquomanagementrdquo against ldquoentrepreneur-shiprdquo as adversaries if not as mutually exclusive Thatrsquos like sayingthat the fingering hand and the bow hand of the violinist areldquoadversariesrdquo or ldquomutually exclusiverdquo Both are always needed andat the same time And both have to be coordinated and worktogether Any existing organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital goes down fast if it does not innovateConversely any new organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital collapses if it does not manage Not toinnovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing orga-nizations Not to know how to manage is the single largest reasonfor the failure of new ventures

Yet few management books have paid attention to entrepreneur-ship and innovation One reason is that during the period afterWorld War II when most of those books were written managingthe existing rather than innovating the new and different was thedominant task During this period most institutions developed

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 8

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 9

__ -1__ 0__+1

along lines laid down thirty or fifty years earlier This has nowchanged dramatically We have again entered an era of innovationand it is by no means confined to ldquohigh-techrdquo or to technology gen-erally In fact social innovationmdashas this chapter tries to makeclearmdashmay be of greater importance and have much greater impactthan any scientific or technical invention Furthermore we nowhave a ldquodisciplinerdquo of entrepreneurship and innovation (see myInnovation and Entrepreneurship 1986) It is clearly a part of man-agement and rests indeed on well-known and tested managementprinciples It applies to both existing organizations and new ven-tures and to both business and nonbusiness institutions includinggovernment

The Accountabi l i ty of Management

Management books tend to focus on the function of managementinside its organization Few yet accept it as a social function But itis precisely because management has become so pervasive as a socialfunction that it faces its most serious challenge To whom is man-agement accountable And for what On what does managementbase its power What gives it legitimacy

These are not business questions or economic questions Theyare political questions Yet they underlie the most serious assault onmanagement in its historymdasha far more serious assault than anymounted by Marxists or labor unions the hostile takeover AnAmerican phenomenon at first it has spread throughout the non-Communist developed world What made it possible was the emer-gence of the employee pension funds as the controlling shareholdersof publicly owned companies The pension funds while legallyldquoownersrdquo are economically ldquoinvestorsrdquomdashand indeed often ldquospecu-latorsrdquo They have no interest in the enterprise and its welfare Infact in the United States at least they are ldquotrusteesrdquo and are notsupposed to consider anything but immediate pecuniary gainWhat underlies the takeover bid is the postulate that the enterprisersquos

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 9

10 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

sole function is to provide the largest possible immediate gain to theshareholder In the absence of any other justification for managementand enterprise the ldquoraiderrdquo with his hostile takeover bid prevailsmdashand only too often immediately dismantles or loots the going con-cern sacrificing long-range wealth-producing capacity to short-termgains

Managementmdashand not only in the business enterprisemdashhas tobe accountable for performance But how is performance to bedefined How is it to be measured How is it to be enforced And towhom should management be accountable That these questionscan be asked is in itself a measure of the success and importance ofmanagement That they need to be asked is however also anindictment of managers They have not yet faced up to the fact thatthey represent powermdashand power has to be accountable has to belegitimate They have not yet faced up to the fact that they matter

What Is Management

But what is management Is it a bag of techniques and tricks Abundle of analytical tools like those taught in business schoolsThese are important to be sure just as thermometer and anatomyare important to the physician But the evolution and history ofmanagementmdashits successes as well as its problemsmdashteach thatmanagement is above all else based on a very few essential princi-ples To be specific

Management is about human beings Its task is to make peo-ple capable of joint performance to make their strengthseffective and their weaknesses irrelevant This is what organi-zation is all about and it is the reason that management is thecritical determining factor These days practically all of uswork for a managed institution large or small business ornonbusiness We depend on management for our livelihoods

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 10

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 11

__ -1__ 0__+1

And our ability to contribute to society also depends as muchon the management of the organization for which we work asit does on our own skills dedication and effort

Because management deals with the integration of people in acommon venture it is deeply embedded in culture Whatmanagers do in West Germany in the United Kingdom inthe United States in Japan or in Brazil is exactly the sameHow they do it may be quite different Thus one of the basicchallenges managers in a developing country face is to findand identify those parts of their own tradition history andculture that can be used as management building blocks Thedifference between Japanrsquos economic success and Indiarsquos rela-tive backwardness is largely explained by the fact thatJapanese managers were able to plant imported managementconcepts in their own cultural soil and make them grow

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals andshared values Without such commitment there is no enter-prise there is only a mob The enterprise must have simpleclear and unifying objectives The mission of the organiza-tion has to be clear enough and big enough to provide com-mon vision The goals that embody it have to be clear publicand constantly reaffirmed Managementrsquos first job is to thinkthrough set and exemplify those objectives values andgoals

Management must also enable the enterprise and each of itsmembers to grow and develop as needs and opportunitieschange Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institu-tion Training and development must be built into it on alllevelsmdashtraining and development that never stop

Every enterprise is composed of people with different skillsand knowledge doing many different kinds of work It mustbe built on communication and on individual responsibilityAll members need to think through what they aim to accom-plishmdashand make sure that their associates know and under-

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 11

12 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

stand that aim All have to think through what they owe toothersmdashand make sure that others understand All have tothink through what they in turn need from othersmdashandmake sure that others know what is expected of them

Neither the quantity of output nor the ldquobottom linerdquo is byitself an adequate measure of the performance of managementand enterprise Market standing innovation productivitydevelopment of people quality financial resultsmdashall are cru-cial to an organizationrsquos performance and to its survival Non-profit institutions too need measurements in a number ofareas specific to their mission Just as a human being needs adiversity of measures to assess his or her health and perfor-mance an organization needs a diversity of measures to assessits health and performance Performance has to be built intothe enterprise and its management it has to be measuredmdashorat least judgedmdashand it has to be continually improved

Finally the single most important thing to remember aboutany enterprise is that results exist only on the outside Theresult of a business is a satisfied customer The result of a hos-pital is a healed patient The result of a school is a studentwho has learned something and puts it to work ten years laterInside an enterprise there are only costs

Managers who understand these principles and function in theirlight will be achieving accomplished managers

Management as a Libera l Ar t

Thirty years ago the English scientist and novelist C P Snowtalked of the ldquotwo culturesrdquo of contemporary society Managementhowever fits neither Snowrsquos ldquohumanistrdquo nor his ldquoscientistrdquo It dealswith action and application and its test is results This makes it atechnology But management also deals with people their valuestheir growth and developmentmdashand this makes it a humanity So

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 12

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 13

__ -1__ 0__+1

does its concern with and impact on social structure and the com-munity Indeed as everyone has learned who like this author hasbeen working with managers of all kinds of institutions for longyears management is deeply involved in moral concernsmdashthenature of man good and evil

Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal artmdashldquoliberalrdquo because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge self-knowledge wisdom and leadership ldquoartrdquo because it is alsoconcerned with practice and application Managers draw on all theknowledges and insights of the humanities and the social sciencesmdashon psychology and philosophy on economics and history onethicsmdashas well as on the physical sciences But they have to focusthis knowledge on effectiveness and resultsmdashon healing a sickpatient teaching a student building a bridge designing and sellinga ldquouser-friendlyrdquo software program

For these reasons management will increasingly be the disci-pline and the practice through which the ldquohumanitiesrdquo will againacquire recognition impact and relevance

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 13

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 14

__ -1__ 0__+1

II

T H E I N D I V I D U A L

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 15

-1__0__

+1__

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 16

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

6 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

research department Other specialized departments followed suitBy World War I the standard functions of a manufacturer had beendeveloped research and engineering manufacturing sales financeand accounting and a little later human resources (or personnel)

Even more important for its impact on enterprisemdashand on theworld economy in generalmdashwas another management-directeddevelopment that took place at this time That was the applicationof management to manual work in the form of training The childof wartime necessity training has propelled the transformation ofthe world economy in the last forty years because it allows low-wagecountries to do something that traditional economic theory hadsaid could never be done to become efficientmdashand yet still low-wagemdashcompetitors almost overnight

Adam Smith reported that it took several hundred years for acountry or region to develop a tradition of labor and the expertise inmanual and managerial skills needed to produce and market a givenproduct whether cotton textiles or violins

During World War I however large numbers of unskilledpreindustrial people had to be made productive workers in practi-cally no time To meet this need businesses in the United Statesand the United Kingdom began to apply the theory of scientificmanagement developed by Frederick W Taylor between 1885 and1910 to the systematic training of blue-collar workers on a largescale They analyzed tasks and broke them down into individualunskilled operations that could then be learned quite quickly Fur-ther developed in World War II training was then picked up by theJapanese and twenty years later by the South Koreans who madeit the basis for their countriesrsquo phenomenal development

During the 1920s and 1930s management was applied to manymore areas and aspects of the manufacturing business Decentraliza-tion for instance arose to combine the advantages of bigness andthe advantages of smallness within one enterprise Accounting wentfrom ldquobookkeepingrdquo to analysis and control Planning grew out ofthe ldquoGantt chartsrdquo designed in 1917 and 1918 to plan war produc-tion and so did the use of analytical logic and statistics which

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 6

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 7

__ -1__ 0__+1

employ quantification to convert experience and intuition into def-initions information and diagnosis Marketing evolved as a resultof applying management concepts to distribution and sellingMoreover as early as the mid-1920s and early 1930s some Ameri-can management pioneers such as Thomas Watson Sr at thefledgling IBM Robert E Wood at Sears Roebuck and GeorgeElton Mayo at the Harvard Business School began to question theway manufacturing was organized They concluded that the assem-bly line was a short-term compromise Despite its tremendous pro-ductivity it was poor economics because of its inflexibility poor useof human resources even poor engineering They began the think-ing and experimenting that eventually led to ldquoautomationrdquo as theway to organize the manufacturing process and to teamwork qual-ity circles and the information-based organization as the way tomanage human resources Every one of these managerial innova-tions represented the application of knowledge to work the substi-tution of system and information for guesswork brawn and toilEvery one to use Frederick Taylorrsquos term replaced ldquoworkingharderrdquo with ldquoworking smarterrdquo

The powerful effect of these changes became apparent duringWorld War II To the very end the Germans were by far the betterstrategists Having much shorter interior lines they needed fewersupport troops and could match their opponents in combatstrength Yet the Allies wonmdashtheir victory achieved by manage-ment The United States with one-fifth the population of all theother belligerents combined had almost as many men in uniformYet it produced more war materieacutel than all the others takentogether It managed to transport the stuff to fighting fronts as farapart as China Russia India Africa and Western Europe Nowonder then that by the warrsquos end almost all the world hadbecome management-conscious Or that management emerged as arecognizably distinct kind of work one that could be studied anddeveloped into a disciplinemdashas happened in each country that hasenjoyed economic leadership during the postwar period

After World War II we began to see that management is not

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 7

8 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

exclusively business management It pertains to every human effortthat brings together in one organization people of diverse knowl-edge and skills It needs to be applied to all third-sector institutionssuch as hospitals universities churches arts organizations andsocial service agencies which since World War II have grown fasterin the United States than either business or government For eventhough the need to manage volunteers or raise funds may differen-tiate nonprofit managers from their for-profit peers many more oftheir responsibilities are the samemdashamong them defining the rightstrategy and goals developing people measuring performance andmarketing the organizationrsquos services Management worldwide hasbecome the new social function

Management and Entrepreneurship

One important advance in the discipline and practice of manage-ment is that both now embrace entrepreneurship and innovation Asham fight these days pits ldquomanagementrdquo against ldquoentrepreneur-shiprdquo as adversaries if not as mutually exclusive Thatrsquos like sayingthat the fingering hand and the bow hand of the violinist areldquoadversariesrdquo or ldquomutually exclusiverdquo Both are always needed andat the same time And both have to be coordinated and worktogether Any existing organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital goes down fast if it does not innovateConversely any new organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital collapses if it does not manage Not toinnovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing orga-nizations Not to know how to manage is the single largest reasonfor the failure of new ventures

Yet few management books have paid attention to entrepreneur-ship and innovation One reason is that during the period afterWorld War II when most of those books were written managingthe existing rather than innovating the new and different was thedominant task During this period most institutions developed

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 8

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 9

__ -1__ 0__+1

along lines laid down thirty or fifty years earlier This has nowchanged dramatically We have again entered an era of innovationand it is by no means confined to ldquohigh-techrdquo or to technology gen-erally In fact social innovationmdashas this chapter tries to makeclearmdashmay be of greater importance and have much greater impactthan any scientific or technical invention Furthermore we nowhave a ldquodisciplinerdquo of entrepreneurship and innovation (see myInnovation and Entrepreneurship 1986) It is clearly a part of man-agement and rests indeed on well-known and tested managementprinciples It applies to both existing organizations and new ven-tures and to both business and nonbusiness institutions includinggovernment

The Accountabi l i ty of Management

Management books tend to focus on the function of managementinside its organization Few yet accept it as a social function But itis precisely because management has become so pervasive as a socialfunction that it faces its most serious challenge To whom is man-agement accountable And for what On what does managementbase its power What gives it legitimacy

These are not business questions or economic questions Theyare political questions Yet they underlie the most serious assault onmanagement in its historymdasha far more serious assault than anymounted by Marxists or labor unions the hostile takeover AnAmerican phenomenon at first it has spread throughout the non-Communist developed world What made it possible was the emer-gence of the employee pension funds as the controlling shareholdersof publicly owned companies The pension funds while legallyldquoownersrdquo are economically ldquoinvestorsrdquomdashand indeed often ldquospecu-latorsrdquo They have no interest in the enterprise and its welfare Infact in the United States at least they are ldquotrusteesrdquo and are notsupposed to consider anything but immediate pecuniary gainWhat underlies the takeover bid is the postulate that the enterprisersquos

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 9

10 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

sole function is to provide the largest possible immediate gain to theshareholder In the absence of any other justification for managementand enterprise the ldquoraiderrdquo with his hostile takeover bid prevailsmdashand only too often immediately dismantles or loots the going con-cern sacrificing long-range wealth-producing capacity to short-termgains

Managementmdashand not only in the business enterprisemdashhas tobe accountable for performance But how is performance to bedefined How is it to be measured How is it to be enforced And towhom should management be accountable That these questionscan be asked is in itself a measure of the success and importance ofmanagement That they need to be asked is however also anindictment of managers They have not yet faced up to the fact thatthey represent powermdashand power has to be accountable has to belegitimate They have not yet faced up to the fact that they matter

What Is Management

But what is management Is it a bag of techniques and tricks Abundle of analytical tools like those taught in business schoolsThese are important to be sure just as thermometer and anatomyare important to the physician But the evolution and history ofmanagementmdashits successes as well as its problemsmdashteach thatmanagement is above all else based on a very few essential princi-ples To be specific

Management is about human beings Its task is to make peo-ple capable of joint performance to make their strengthseffective and their weaknesses irrelevant This is what organi-zation is all about and it is the reason that management is thecritical determining factor These days practically all of uswork for a managed institution large or small business ornonbusiness We depend on management for our livelihoods

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 10

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 11

__ -1__ 0__+1

And our ability to contribute to society also depends as muchon the management of the organization for which we work asit does on our own skills dedication and effort

Because management deals with the integration of people in acommon venture it is deeply embedded in culture Whatmanagers do in West Germany in the United Kingdom inthe United States in Japan or in Brazil is exactly the sameHow they do it may be quite different Thus one of the basicchallenges managers in a developing country face is to findand identify those parts of their own tradition history andculture that can be used as management building blocks Thedifference between Japanrsquos economic success and Indiarsquos rela-tive backwardness is largely explained by the fact thatJapanese managers were able to plant imported managementconcepts in their own cultural soil and make them grow

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals andshared values Without such commitment there is no enter-prise there is only a mob The enterprise must have simpleclear and unifying objectives The mission of the organiza-tion has to be clear enough and big enough to provide com-mon vision The goals that embody it have to be clear publicand constantly reaffirmed Managementrsquos first job is to thinkthrough set and exemplify those objectives values andgoals

Management must also enable the enterprise and each of itsmembers to grow and develop as needs and opportunitieschange Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institu-tion Training and development must be built into it on alllevelsmdashtraining and development that never stop

Every enterprise is composed of people with different skillsand knowledge doing many different kinds of work It mustbe built on communication and on individual responsibilityAll members need to think through what they aim to accom-plishmdashand make sure that their associates know and under-

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 11

12 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

stand that aim All have to think through what they owe toothersmdashand make sure that others understand All have tothink through what they in turn need from othersmdashandmake sure that others know what is expected of them

Neither the quantity of output nor the ldquobottom linerdquo is byitself an adequate measure of the performance of managementand enterprise Market standing innovation productivitydevelopment of people quality financial resultsmdashall are cru-cial to an organizationrsquos performance and to its survival Non-profit institutions too need measurements in a number ofareas specific to their mission Just as a human being needs adiversity of measures to assess his or her health and perfor-mance an organization needs a diversity of measures to assessits health and performance Performance has to be built intothe enterprise and its management it has to be measuredmdashorat least judgedmdashand it has to be continually improved

Finally the single most important thing to remember aboutany enterprise is that results exist only on the outside Theresult of a business is a satisfied customer The result of a hos-pital is a healed patient The result of a school is a studentwho has learned something and puts it to work ten years laterInside an enterprise there are only costs

Managers who understand these principles and function in theirlight will be achieving accomplished managers

Management as a Libera l Ar t

Thirty years ago the English scientist and novelist C P Snowtalked of the ldquotwo culturesrdquo of contemporary society Managementhowever fits neither Snowrsquos ldquohumanistrdquo nor his ldquoscientistrdquo It dealswith action and application and its test is results This makes it atechnology But management also deals with people their valuestheir growth and developmentmdashand this makes it a humanity So

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 12

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 13

__ -1__ 0__+1

does its concern with and impact on social structure and the com-munity Indeed as everyone has learned who like this author hasbeen working with managers of all kinds of institutions for longyears management is deeply involved in moral concernsmdashthenature of man good and evil

Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal artmdashldquoliberalrdquo because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge self-knowledge wisdom and leadership ldquoartrdquo because it is alsoconcerned with practice and application Managers draw on all theknowledges and insights of the humanities and the social sciencesmdashon psychology and philosophy on economics and history onethicsmdashas well as on the physical sciences But they have to focusthis knowledge on effectiveness and resultsmdashon healing a sickpatient teaching a student building a bridge designing and sellinga ldquouser-friendlyrdquo software program

For these reasons management will increasingly be the disci-pline and the practice through which the ldquohumanitiesrdquo will againacquire recognition impact and relevance

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 13

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 14

__ -1__ 0__+1

II

T H E I N D I V I D U A L

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 15

-1__0__

+1__

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 16

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 7

__ -1__ 0__+1

employ quantification to convert experience and intuition into def-initions information and diagnosis Marketing evolved as a resultof applying management concepts to distribution and sellingMoreover as early as the mid-1920s and early 1930s some Ameri-can management pioneers such as Thomas Watson Sr at thefledgling IBM Robert E Wood at Sears Roebuck and GeorgeElton Mayo at the Harvard Business School began to question theway manufacturing was organized They concluded that the assem-bly line was a short-term compromise Despite its tremendous pro-ductivity it was poor economics because of its inflexibility poor useof human resources even poor engineering They began the think-ing and experimenting that eventually led to ldquoautomationrdquo as theway to organize the manufacturing process and to teamwork qual-ity circles and the information-based organization as the way tomanage human resources Every one of these managerial innova-tions represented the application of knowledge to work the substi-tution of system and information for guesswork brawn and toilEvery one to use Frederick Taylorrsquos term replaced ldquoworkingharderrdquo with ldquoworking smarterrdquo

The powerful effect of these changes became apparent duringWorld War II To the very end the Germans were by far the betterstrategists Having much shorter interior lines they needed fewersupport troops and could match their opponents in combatstrength Yet the Allies wonmdashtheir victory achieved by manage-ment The United States with one-fifth the population of all theother belligerents combined had almost as many men in uniformYet it produced more war materieacutel than all the others takentogether It managed to transport the stuff to fighting fronts as farapart as China Russia India Africa and Western Europe Nowonder then that by the warrsquos end almost all the world hadbecome management-conscious Or that management emerged as arecognizably distinct kind of work one that could be studied anddeveloped into a disciplinemdashas happened in each country that hasenjoyed economic leadership during the postwar period

After World War II we began to see that management is not

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 7

8 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

exclusively business management It pertains to every human effortthat brings together in one organization people of diverse knowl-edge and skills It needs to be applied to all third-sector institutionssuch as hospitals universities churches arts organizations andsocial service agencies which since World War II have grown fasterin the United States than either business or government For eventhough the need to manage volunteers or raise funds may differen-tiate nonprofit managers from their for-profit peers many more oftheir responsibilities are the samemdashamong them defining the rightstrategy and goals developing people measuring performance andmarketing the organizationrsquos services Management worldwide hasbecome the new social function

Management and Entrepreneurship

One important advance in the discipline and practice of manage-ment is that both now embrace entrepreneurship and innovation Asham fight these days pits ldquomanagementrdquo against ldquoentrepreneur-shiprdquo as adversaries if not as mutually exclusive Thatrsquos like sayingthat the fingering hand and the bow hand of the violinist areldquoadversariesrdquo or ldquomutually exclusiverdquo Both are always needed andat the same time And both have to be coordinated and worktogether Any existing organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital goes down fast if it does not innovateConversely any new organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital collapses if it does not manage Not toinnovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing orga-nizations Not to know how to manage is the single largest reasonfor the failure of new ventures

Yet few management books have paid attention to entrepreneur-ship and innovation One reason is that during the period afterWorld War II when most of those books were written managingthe existing rather than innovating the new and different was thedominant task During this period most institutions developed

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 8

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 9

__ -1__ 0__+1

along lines laid down thirty or fifty years earlier This has nowchanged dramatically We have again entered an era of innovationand it is by no means confined to ldquohigh-techrdquo or to technology gen-erally In fact social innovationmdashas this chapter tries to makeclearmdashmay be of greater importance and have much greater impactthan any scientific or technical invention Furthermore we nowhave a ldquodisciplinerdquo of entrepreneurship and innovation (see myInnovation and Entrepreneurship 1986) It is clearly a part of man-agement and rests indeed on well-known and tested managementprinciples It applies to both existing organizations and new ven-tures and to both business and nonbusiness institutions includinggovernment

The Accountabi l i ty of Management

Management books tend to focus on the function of managementinside its organization Few yet accept it as a social function But itis precisely because management has become so pervasive as a socialfunction that it faces its most serious challenge To whom is man-agement accountable And for what On what does managementbase its power What gives it legitimacy

These are not business questions or economic questions Theyare political questions Yet they underlie the most serious assault onmanagement in its historymdasha far more serious assault than anymounted by Marxists or labor unions the hostile takeover AnAmerican phenomenon at first it has spread throughout the non-Communist developed world What made it possible was the emer-gence of the employee pension funds as the controlling shareholdersof publicly owned companies The pension funds while legallyldquoownersrdquo are economically ldquoinvestorsrdquomdashand indeed often ldquospecu-latorsrdquo They have no interest in the enterprise and its welfare Infact in the United States at least they are ldquotrusteesrdquo and are notsupposed to consider anything but immediate pecuniary gainWhat underlies the takeover bid is the postulate that the enterprisersquos

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 9

10 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

sole function is to provide the largest possible immediate gain to theshareholder In the absence of any other justification for managementand enterprise the ldquoraiderrdquo with his hostile takeover bid prevailsmdashand only too often immediately dismantles or loots the going con-cern sacrificing long-range wealth-producing capacity to short-termgains

Managementmdashand not only in the business enterprisemdashhas tobe accountable for performance But how is performance to bedefined How is it to be measured How is it to be enforced And towhom should management be accountable That these questionscan be asked is in itself a measure of the success and importance ofmanagement That they need to be asked is however also anindictment of managers They have not yet faced up to the fact thatthey represent powermdashand power has to be accountable has to belegitimate They have not yet faced up to the fact that they matter

What Is Management

But what is management Is it a bag of techniques and tricks Abundle of analytical tools like those taught in business schoolsThese are important to be sure just as thermometer and anatomyare important to the physician But the evolution and history ofmanagementmdashits successes as well as its problemsmdashteach thatmanagement is above all else based on a very few essential princi-ples To be specific

Management is about human beings Its task is to make peo-ple capable of joint performance to make their strengthseffective and their weaknesses irrelevant This is what organi-zation is all about and it is the reason that management is thecritical determining factor These days practically all of uswork for a managed institution large or small business ornonbusiness We depend on management for our livelihoods

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 10

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 11

__ -1__ 0__+1

And our ability to contribute to society also depends as muchon the management of the organization for which we work asit does on our own skills dedication and effort

Because management deals with the integration of people in acommon venture it is deeply embedded in culture Whatmanagers do in West Germany in the United Kingdom inthe United States in Japan or in Brazil is exactly the sameHow they do it may be quite different Thus one of the basicchallenges managers in a developing country face is to findand identify those parts of their own tradition history andculture that can be used as management building blocks Thedifference between Japanrsquos economic success and Indiarsquos rela-tive backwardness is largely explained by the fact thatJapanese managers were able to plant imported managementconcepts in their own cultural soil and make them grow

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals andshared values Without such commitment there is no enter-prise there is only a mob The enterprise must have simpleclear and unifying objectives The mission of the organiza-tion has to be clear enough and big enough to provide com-mon vision The goals that embody it have to be clear publicand constantly reaffirmed Managementrsquos first job is to thinkthrough set and exemplify those objectives values andgoals

Management must also enable the enterprise and each of itsmembers to grow and develop as needs and opportunitieschange Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institu-tion Training and development must be built into it on alllevelsmdashtraining and development that never stop

Every enterprise is composed of people with different skillsand knowledge doing many different kinds of work It mustbe built on communication and on individual responsibilityAll members need to think through what they aim to accom-plishmdashand make sure that their associates know and under-

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 11

12 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

stand that aim All have to think through what they owe toothersmdashand make sure that others understand All have tothink through what they in turn need from othersmdashandmake sure that others know what is expected of them

Neither the quantity of output nor the ldquobottom linerdquo is byitself an adequate measure of the performance of managementand enterprise Market standing innovation productivitydevelopment of people quality financial resultsmdashall are cru-cial to an organizationrsquos performance and to its survival Non-profit institutions too need measurements in a number ofareas specific to their mission Just as a human being needs adiversity of measures to assess his or her health and perfor-mance an organization needs a diversity of measures to assessits health and performance Performance has to be built intothe enterprise and its management it has to be measuredmdashorat least judgedmdashand it has to be continually improved

Finally the single most important thing to remember aboutany enterprise is that results exist only on the outside Theresult of a business is a satisfied customer The result of a hos-pital is a healed patient The result of a school is a studentwho has learned something and puts it to work ten years laterInside an enterprise there are only costs

Managers who understand these principles and function in theirlight will be achieving accomplished managers

Management as a Libera l Ar t

Thirty years ago the English scientist and novelist C P Snowtalked of the ldquotwo culturesrdquo of contemporary society Managementhowever fits neither Snowrsquos ldquohumanistrdquo nor his ldquoscientistrdquo It dealswith action and application and its test is results This makes it atechnology But management also deals with people their valuestheir growth and developmentmdashand this makes it a humanity So

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 12

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 13

__ -1__ 0__+1

does its concern with and impact on social structure and the com-munity Indeed as everyone has learned who like this author hasbeen working with managers of all kinds of institutions for longyears management is deeply involved in moral concernsmdashthenature of man good and evil

Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal artmdashldquoliberalrdquo because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge self-knowledge wisdom and leadership ldquoartrdquo because it is alsoconcerned with practice and application Managers draw on all theknowledges and insights of the humanities and the social sciencesmdashon psychology and philosophy on economics and history onethicsmdashas well as on the physical sciences But they have to focusthis knowledge on effectiveness and resultsmdashon healing a sickpatient teaching a student building a bridge designing and sellinga ldquouser-friendlyrdquo software program

For these reasons management will increasingly be the disci-pline and the practice through which the ldquohumanitiesrdquo will againacquire recognition impact and relevance

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 13

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 14

__ -1__ 0__+1

II

T H E I N D I V I D U A L

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 15

-1__0__

+1__

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 16

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

8 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

exclusively business management It pertains to every human effortthat brings together in one organization people of diverse knowl-edge and skills It needs to be applied to all third-sector institutionssuch as hospitals universities churches arts organizations andsocial service agencies which since World War II have grown fasterin the United States than either business or government For eventhough the need to manage volunteers or raise funds may differen-tiate nonprofit managers from their for-profit peers many more oftheir responsibilities are the samemdashamong them defining the rightstrategy and goals developing people measuring performance andmarketing the organizationrsquos services Management worldwide hasbecome the new social function

Management and Entrepreneurship

One important advance in the discipline and practice of manage-ment is that both now embrace entrepreneurship and innovation Asham fight these days pits ldquomanagementrdquo against ldquoentrepreneur-shiprdquo as adversaries if not as mutually exclusive Thatrsquos like sayingthat the fingering hand and the bow hand of the violinist areldquoadversariesrdquo or ldquomutually exclusiverdquo Both are always needed andat the same time And both have to be coordinated and worktogether Any existing organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital goes down fast if it does not innovateConversely any new organization whether a business a church alabor union or a hospital collapses if it does not manage Not toinnovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing orga-nizations Not to know how to manage is the single largest reasonfor the failure of new ventures

Yet few management books have paid attention to entrepreneur-ship and innovation One reason is that during the period afterWorld War II when most of those books were written managingthe existing rather than innovating the new and different was thedominant task During this period most institutions developed

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 8

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 9

__ -1__ 0__+1

along lines laid down thirty or fifty years earlier This has nowchanged dramatically We have again entered an era of innovationand it is by no means confined to ldquohigh-techrdquo or to technology gen-erally In fact social innovationmdashas this chapter tries to makeclearmdashmay be of greater importance and have much greater impactthan any scientific or technical invention Furthermore we nowhave a ldquodisciplinerdquo of entrepreneurship and innovation (see myInnovation and Entrepreneurship 1986) It is clearly a part of man-agement and rests indeed on well-known and tested managementprinciples It applies to both existing organizations and new ven-tures and to both business and nonbusiness institutions includinggovernment

The Accountabi l i ty of Management

Management books tend to focus on the function of managementinside its organization Few yet accept it as a social function But itis precisely because management has become so pervasive as a socialfunction that it faces its most serious challenge To whom is man-agement accountable And for what On what does managementbase its power What gives it legitimacy

These are not business questions or economic questions Theyare political questions Yet they underlie the most serious assault onmanagement in its historymdasha far more serious assault than anymounted by Marxists or labor unions the hostile takeover AnAmerican phenomenon at first it has spread throughout the non-Communist developed world What made it possible was the emer-gence of the employee pension funds as the controlling shareholdersof publicly owned companies The pension funds while legallyldquoownersrdquo are economically ldquoinvestorsrdquomdashand indeed often ldquospecu-latorsrdquo They have no interest in the enterprise and its welfare Infact in the United States at least they are ldquotrusteesrdquo and are notsupposed to consider anything but immediate pecuniary gainWhat underlies the takeover bid is the postulate that the enterprisersquos

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 9

10 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

sole function is to provide the largest possible immediate gain to theshareholder In the absence of any other justification for managementand enterprise the ldquoraiderrdquo with his hostile takeover bid prevailsmdashand only too often immediately dismantles or loots the going con-cern sacrificing long-range wealth-producing capacity to short-termgains

Managementmdashand not only in the business enterprisemdashhas tobe accountable for performance But how is performance to bedefined How is it to be measured How is it to be enforced And towhom should management be accountable That these questionscan be asked is in itself a measure of the success and importance ofmanagement That they need to be asked is however also anindictment of managers They have not yet faced up to the fact thatthey represent powermdashand power has to be accountable has to belegitimate They have not yet faced up to the fact that they matter

What Is Management

But what is management Is it a bag of techniques and tricks Abundle of analytical tools like those taught in business schoolsThese are important to be sure just as thermometer and anatomyare important to the physician But the evolution and history ofmanagementmdashits successes as well as its problemsmdashteach thatmanagement is above all else based on a very few essential princi-ples To be specific

Management is about human beings Its task is to make peo-ple capable of joint performance to make their strengthseffective and their weaknesses irrelevant This is what organi-zation is all about and it is the reason that management is thecritical determining factor These days practically all of uswork for a managed institution large or small business ornonbusiness We depend on management for our livelihoods

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 10

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 11

__ -1__ 0__+1

And our ability to contribute to society also depends as muchon the management of the organization for which we work asit does on our own skills dedication and effort

Because management deals with the integration of people in acommon venture it is deeply embedded in culture Whatmanagers do in West Germany in the United Kingdom inthe United States in Japan or in Brazil is exactly the sameHow they do it may be quite different Thus one of the basicchallenges managers in a developing country face is to findand identify those parts of their own tradition history andculture that can be used as management building blocks Thedifference between Japanrsquos economic success and Indiarsquos rela-tive backwardness is largely explained by the fact thatJapanese managers were able to plant imported managementconcepts in their own cultural soil and make them grow

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals andshared values Without such commitment there is no enter-prise there is only a mob The enterprise must have simpleclear and unifying objectives The mission of the organiza-tion has to be clear enough and big enough to provide com-mon vision The goals that embody it have to be clear publicand constantly reaffirmed Managementrsquos first job is to thinkthrough set and exemplify those objectives values andgoals

Management must also enable the enterprise and each of itsmembers to grow and develop as needs and opportunitieschange Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institu-tion Training and development must be built into it on alllevelsmdashtraining and development that never stop

Every enterprise is composed of people with different skillsand knowledge doing many different kinds of work It mustbe built on communication and on individual responsibilityAll members need to think through what they aim to accom-plishmdashand make sure that their associates know and under-

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 11

12 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

stand that aim All have to think through what they owe toothersmdashand make sure that others understand All have tothink through what they in turn need from othersmdashandmake sure that others know what is expected of them

Neither the quantity of output nor the ldquobottom linerdquo is byitself an adequate measure of the performance of managementand enterprise Market standing innovation productivitydevelopment of people quality financial resultsmdashall are cru-cial to an organizationrsquos performance and to its survival Non-profit institutions too need measurements in a number ofareas specific to their mission Just as a human being needs adiversity of measures to assess his or her health and perfor-mance an organization needs a diversity of measures to assessits health and performance Performance has to be built intothe enterprise and its management it has to be measuredmdashorat least judgedmdashand it has to be continually improved

Finally the single most important thing to remember aboutany enterprise is that results exist only on the outside Theresult of a business is a satisfied customer The result of a hos-pital is a healed patient The result of a school is a studentwho has learned something and puts it to work ten years laterInside an enterprise there are only costs

Managers who understand these principles and function in theirlight will be achieving accomplished managers

Management as a Libera l Ar t

Thirty years ago the English scientist and novelist C P Snowtalked of the ldquotwo culturesrdquo of contemporary society Managementhowever fits neither Snowrsquos ldquohumanistrdquo nor his ldquoscientistrdquo It dealswith action and application and its test is results This makes it atechnology But management also deals with people their valuestheir growth and developmentmdashand this makes it a humanity So

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 12

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 13

__ -1__ 0__+1

does its concern with and impact on social structure and the com-munity Indeed as everyone has learned who like this author hasbeen working with managers of all kinds of institutions for longyears management is deeply involved in moral concernsmdashthenature of man good and evil

Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal artmdashldquoliberalrdquo because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge self-knowledge wisdom and leadership ldquoartrdquo because it is alsoconcerned with practice and application Managers draw on all theknowledges and insights of the humanities and the social sciencesmdashon psychology and philosophy on economics and history onethicsmdashas well as on the physical sciences But they have to focusthis knowledge on effectiveness and resultsmdashon healing a sickpatient teaching a student building a bridge designing and sellinga ldquouser-friendlyrdquo software program

For these reasons management will increasingly be the disci-pline and the practice through which the ldquohumanitiesrdquo will againacquire recognition impact and relevance

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 13

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 14

__ -1__ 0__+1

II

T H E I N D I V I D U A L

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 15

-1__0__

+1__

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 16

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 9

__ -1__ 0__+1

along lines laid down thirty or fifty years earlier This has nowchanged dramatically We have again entered an era of innovationand it is by no means confined to ldquohigh-techrdquo or to technology gen-erally In fact social innovationmdashas this chapter tries to makeclearmdashmay be of greater importance and have much greater impactthan any scientific or technical invention Furthermore we nowhave a ldquodisciplinerdquo of entrepreneurship and innovation (see myInnovation and Entrepreneurship 1986) It is clearly a part of man-agement and rests indeed on well-known and tested managementprinciples It applies to both existing organizations and new ven-tures and to both business and nonbusiness institutions includinggovernment

The Accountabi l i ty of Management

Management books tend to focus on the function of managementinside its organization Few yet accept it as a social function But itis precisely because management has become so pervasive as a socialfunction that it faces its most serious challenge To whom is man-agement accountable And for what On what does managementbase its power What gives it legitimacy

These are not business questions or economic questions Theyare political questions Yet they underlie the most serious assault onmanagement in its historymdasha far more serious assault than anymounted by Marxists or labor unions the hostile takeover AnAmerican phenomenon at first it has spread throughout the non-Communist developed world What made it possible was the emer-gence of the employee pension funds as the controlling shareholdersof publicly owned companies The pension funds while legallyldquoownersrdquo are economically ldquoinvestorsrdquomdashand indeed often ldquospecu-latorsrdquo They have no interest in the enterprise and its welfare Infact in the United States at least they are ldquotrusteesrdquo and are notsupposed to consider anything but immediate pecuniary gainWhat underlies the takeover bid is the postulate that the enterprisersquos

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 9

10 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

sole function is to provide the largest possible immediate gain to theshareholder In the absence of any other justification for managementand enterprise the ldquoraiderrdquo with his hostile takeover bid prevailsmdashand only too often immediately dismantles or loots the going con-cern sacrificing long-range wealth-producing capacity to short-termgains

Managementmdashand not only in the business enterprisemdashhas tobe accountable for performance But how is performance to bedefined How is it to be measured How is it to be enforced And towhom should management be accountable That these questionscan be asked is in itself a measure of the success and importance ofmanagement That they need to be asked is however also anindictment of managers They have not yet faced up to the fact thatthey represent powermdashand power has to be accountable has to belegitimate They have not yet faced up to the fact that they matter

What Is Management

But what is management Is it a bag of techniques and tricks Abundle of analytical tools like those taught in business schoolsThese are important to be sure just as thermometer and anatomyare important to the physician But the evolution and history ofmanagementmdashits successes as well as its problemsmdashteach thatmanagement is above all else based on a very few essential princi-ples To be specific

Management is about human beings Its task is to make peo-ple capable of joint performance to make their strengthseffective and their weaknesses irrelevant This is what organi-zation is all about and it is the reason that management is thecritical determining factor These days practically all of uswork for a managed institution large or small business ornonbusiness We depend on management for our livelihoods

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 10

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 11

__ -1__ 0__+1

And our ability to contribute to society also depends as muchon the management of the organization for which we work asit does on our own skills dedication and effort

Because management deals with the integration of people in acommon venture it is deeply embedded in culture Whatmanagers do in West Germany in the United Kingdom inthe United States in Japan or in Brazil is exactly the sameHow they do it may be quite different Thus one of the basicchallenges managers in a developing country face is to findand identify those parts of their own tradition history andculture that can be used as management building blocks Thedifference between Japanrsquos economic success and Indiarsquos rela-tive backwardness is largely explained by the fact thatJapanese managers were able to plant imported managementconcepts in their own cultural soil and make them grow

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals andshared values Without such commitment there is no enter-prise there is only a mob The enterprise must have simpleclear and unifying objectives The mission of the organiza-tion has to be clear enough and big enough to provide com-mon vision The goals that embody it have to be clear publicand constantly reaffirmed Managementrsquos first job is to thinkthrough set and exemplify those objectives values andgoals

Management must also enable the enterprise and each of itsmembers to grow and develop as needs and opportunitieschange Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institu-tion Training and development must be built into it on alllevelsmdashtraining and development that never stop

Every enterprise is composed of people with different skillsand knowledge doing many different kinds of work It mustbe built on communication and on individual responsibilityAll members need to think through what they aim to accom-plishmdashand make sure that their associates know and under-

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 11

12 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

stand that aim All have to think through what they owe toothersmdashand make sure that others understand All have tothink through what they in turn need from othersmdashandmake sure that others know what is expected of them

Neither the quantity of output nor the ldquobottom linerdquo is byitself an adequate measure of the performance of managementand enterprise Market standing innovation productivitydevelopment of people quality financial resultsmdashall are cru-cial to an organizationrsquos performance and to its survival Non-profit institutions too need measurements in a number ofareas specific to their mission Just as a human being needs adiversity of measures to assess his or her health and perfor-mance an organization needs a diversity of measures to assessits health and performance Performance has to be built intothe enterprise and its management it has to be measuredmdashorat least judgedmdashand it has to be continually improved

Finally the single most important thing to remember aboutany enterprise is that results exist only on the outside Theresult of a business is a satisfied customer The result of a hos-pital is a healed patient The result of a school is a studentwho has learned something and puts it to work ten years laterInside an enterprise there are only costs

Managers who understand these principles and function in theirlight will be achieving accomplished managers

Management as a Libera l Ar t

Thirty years ago the English scientist and novelist C P Snowtalked of the ldquotwo culturesrdquo of contemporary society Managementhowever fits neither Snowrsquos ldquohumanistrdquo nor his ldquoscientistrdquo It dealswith action and application and its test is results This makes it atechnology But management also deals with people their valuestheir growth and developmentmdashand this makes it a humanity So

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 12

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 13

__ -1__ 0__+1

does its concern with and impact on social structure and the com-munity Indeed as everyone has learned who like this author hasbeen working with managers of all kinds of institutions for longyears management is deeply involved in moral concernsmdashthenature of man good and evil

Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal artmdashldquoliberalrdquo because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge self-knowledge wisdom and leadership ldquoartrdquo because it is alsoconcerned with practice and application Managers draw on all theknowledges and insights of the humanities and the social sciencesmdashon psychology and philosophy on economics and history onethicsmdashas well as on the physical sciences But they have to focusthis knowledge on effectiveness and resultsmdashon healing a sickpatient teaching a student building a bridge designing and sellinga ldquouser-friendlyrdquo software program

For these reasons management will increasingly be the disci-pline and the practice through which the ldquohumanitiesrdquo will againacquire recognition impact and relevance

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 13

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 14

__ -1__ 0__+1

II

T H E I N D I V I D U A L

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 15

-1__0__

+1__

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 16

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

10 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

sole function is to provide the largest possible immediate gain to theshareholder In the absence of any other justification for managementand enterprise the ldquoraiderrdquo with his hostile takeover bid prevailsmdashand only too often immediately dismantles or loots the going con-cern sacrificing long-range wealth-producing capacity to short-termgains

Managementmdashand not only in the business enterprisemdashhas tobe accountable for performance But how is performance to bedefined How is it to be measured How is it to be enforced And towhom should management be accountable That these questionscan be asked is in itself a measure of the success and importance ofmanagement That they need to be asked is however also anindictment of managers They have not yet faced up to the fact thatthey represent powermdashand power has to be accountable has to belegitimate They have not yet faced up to the fact that they matter

What Is Management

But what is management Is it a bag of techniques and tricks Abundle of analytical tools like those taught in business schoolsThese are important to be sure just as thermometer and anatomyare important to the physician But the evolution and history ofmanagementmdashits successes as well as its problemsmdashteach thatmanagement is above all else based on a very few essential princi-ples To be specific

Management is about human beings Its task is to make peo-ple capable of joint performance to make their strengthseffective and their weaknesses irrelevant This is what organi-zation is all about and it is the reason that management is thecritical determining factor These days practically all of uswork for a managed institution large or small business ornonbusiness We depend on management for our livelihoods

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 10

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 11

__ -1__ 0__+1

And our ability to contribute to society also depends as muchon the management of the organization for which we work asit does on our own skills dedication and effort

Because management deals with the integration of people in acommon venture it is deeply embedded in culture Whatmanagers do in West Germany in the United Kingdom inthe United States in Japan or in Brazil is exactly the sameHow they do it may be quite different Thus one of the basicchallenges managers in a developing country face is to findand identify those parts of their own tradition history andculture that can be used as management building blocks Thedifference between Japanrsquos economic success and Indiarsquos rela-tive backwardness is largely explained by the fact thatJapanese managers were able to plant imported managementconcepts in their own cultural soil and make them grow

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals andshared values Without such commitment there is no enter-prise there is only a mob The enterprise must have simpleclear and unifying objectives The mission of the organiza-tion has to be clear enough and big enough to provide com-mon vision The goals that embody it have to be clear publicand constantly reaffirmed Managementrsquos first job is to thinkthrough set and exemplify those objectives values andgoals

Management must also enable the enterprise and each of itsmembers to grow and develop as needs and opportunitieschange Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institu-tion Training and development must be built into it on alllevelsmdashtraining and development that never stop

Every enterprise is composed of people with different skillsand knowledge doing many different kinds of work It mustbe built on communication and on individual responsibilityAll members need to think through what they aim to accom-plishmdashand make sure that their associates know and under-

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 11

12 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

stand that aim All have to think through what they owe toothersmdashand make sure that others understand All have tothink through what they in turn need from othersmdashandmake sure that others know what is expected of them

Neither the quantity of output nor the ldquobottom linerdquo is byitself an adequate measure of the performance of managementand enterprise Market standing innovation productivitydevelopment of people quality financial resultsmdashall are cru-cial to an organizationrsquos performance and to its survival Non-profit institutions too need measurements in a number ofareas specific to their mission Just as a human being needs adiversity of measures to assess his or her health and perfor-mance an organization needs a diversity of measures to assessits health and performance Performance has to be built intothe enterprise and its management it has to be measuredmdashorat least judgedmdashand it has to be continually improved

Finally the single most important thing to remember aboutany enterprise is that results exist only on the outside Theresult of a business is a satisfied customer The result of a hos-pital is a healed patient The result of a school is a studentwho has learned something and puts it to work ten years laterInside an enterprise there are only costs

Managers who understand these principles and function in theirlight will be achieving accomplished managers

Management as a Libera l Ar t

Thirty years ago the English scientist and novelist C P Snowtalked of the ldquotwo culturesrdquo of contemporary society Managementhowever fits neither Snowrsquos ldquohumanistrdquo nor his ldquoscientistrdquo It dealswith action and application and its test is results This makes it atechnology But management also deals with people their valuestheir growth and developmentmdashand this makes it a humanity So

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 12

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 13

__ -1__ 0__+1

does its concern with and impact on social structure and the com-munity Indeed as everyone has learned who like this author hasbeen working with managers of all kinds of institutions for longyears management is deeply involved in moral concernsmdashthenature of man good and evil

Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal artmdashldquoliberalrdquo because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge self-knowledge wisdom and leadership ldquoartrdquo because it is alsoconcerned with practice and application Managers draw on all theknowledges and insights of the humanities and the social sciencesmdashon psychology and philosophy on economics and history onethicsmdashas well as on the physical sciences But they have to focusthis knowledge on effectiveness and resultsmdashon healing a sickpatient teaching a student building a bridge designing and sellinga ldquouser-friendlyrdquo software program

For these reasons management will increasingly be the disci-pline and the practice through which the ldquohumanitiesrdquo will againacquire recognition impact and relevance

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 13

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 14

__ -1__ 0__+1

II

T H E I N D I V I D U A L

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 15

-1__0__

+1__

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 16

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 11

__ -1__ 0__+1

And our ability to contribute to society also depends as muchon the management of the organization for which we work asit does on our own skills dedication and effort

Because management deals with the integration of people in acommon venture it is deeply embedded in culture Whatmanagers do in West Germany in the United Kingdom inthe United States in Japan or in Brazil is exactly the sameHow they do it may be quite different Thus one of the basicchallenges managers in a developing country face is to findand identify those parts of their own tradition history andculture that can be used as management building blocks Thedifference between Japanrsquos economic success and Indiarsquos rela-tive backwardness is largely explained by the fact thatJapanese managers were able to plant imported managementconcepts in their own cultural soil and make them grow

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals andshared values Without such commitment there is no enter-prise there is only a mob The enterprise must have simpleclear and unifying objectives The mission of the organiza-tion has to be clear enough and big enough to provide com-mon vision The goals that embody it have to be clear publicand constantly reaffirmed Managementrsquos first job is to thinkthrough set and exemplify those objectives values andgoals

Management must also enable the enterprise and each of itsmembers to grow and develop as needs and opportunitieschange Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institu-tion Training and development must be built into it on alllevelsmdashtraining and development that never stop

Every enterprise is composed of people with different skillsand knowledge doing many different kinds of work It mustbe built on communication and on individual responsibilityAll members need to think through what they aim to accom-plishmdashand make sure that their associates know and under-

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 11

12 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

stand that aim All have to think through what they owe toothersmdashand make sure that others understand All have tothink through what they in turn need from othersmdashandmake sure that others know what is expected of them

Neither the quantity of output nor the ldquobottom linerdquo is byitself an adequate measure of the performance of managementand enterprise Market standing innovation productivitydevelopment of people quality financial resultsmdashall are cru-cial to an organizationrsquos performance and to its survival Non-profit institutions too need measurements in a number ofareas specific to their mission Just as a human being needs adiversity of measures to assess his or her health and perfor-mance an organization needs a diversity of measures to assessits health and performance Performance has to be built intothe enterprise and its management it has to be measuredmdashorat least judgedmdashand it has to be continually improved

Finally the single most important thing to remember aboutany enterprise is that results exist only on the outside Theresult of a business is a satisfied customer The result of a hos-pital is a healed patient The result of a school is a studentwho has learned something and puts it to work ten years laterInside an enterprise there are only costs

Managers who understand these principles and function in theirlight will be achieving accomplished managers

Management as a Libera l Ar t

Thirty years ago the English scientist and novelist C P Snowtalked of the ldquotwo culturesrdquo of contemporary society Managementhowever fits neither Snowrsquos ldquohumanistrdquo nor his ldquoscientistrdquo It dealswith action and application and its test is results This makes it atechnology But management also deals with people their valuestheir growth and developmentmdashand this makes it a humanity So

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 12

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 13

__ -1__ 0__+1

does its concern with and impact on social structure and the com-munity Indeed as everyone has learned who like this author hasbeen working with managers of all kinds of institutions for longyears management is deeply involved in moral concernsmdashthenature of man good and evil

Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal artmdashldquoliberalrdquo because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge self-knowledge wisdom and leadership ldquoartrdquo because it is alsoconcerned with practice and application Managers draw on all theknowledges and insights of the humanities and the social sciencesmdashon psychology and philosophy on economics and history onethicsmdashas well as on the physical sciences But they have to focusthis knowledge on effectiveness and resultsmdashon healing a sickpatient teaching a student building a bridge designing and sellinga ldquouser-friendlyrdquo software program

For these reasons management will increasingly be the disci-pline and the practice through which the ldquohumanitiesrdquo will againacquire recognition impact and relevance

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 13

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 14

__ -1__ 0__+1

II

T H E I N D I V I D U A L

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 15

-1__0__

+1__

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 16

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

12 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

stand that aim All have to think through what they owe toothersmdashand make sure that others understand All have tothink through what they in turn need from othersmdashandmake sure that others know what is expected of them

Neither the quantity of output nor the ldquobottom linerdquo is byitself an adequate measure of the performance of managementand enterprise Market standing innovation productivitydevelopment of people quality financial resultsmdashall are cru-cial to an organizationrsquos performance and to its survival Non-profit institutions too need measurements in a number ofareas specific to their mission Just as a human being needs adiversity of measures to assess his or her health and perfor-mance an organization needs a diversity of measures to assessits health and performance Performance has to be built intothe enterprise and its management it has to be measuredmdashorat least judgedmdashand it has to be continually improved

Finally the single most important thing to remember aboutany enterprise is that results exist only on the outside Theresult of a business is a satisfied customer The result of a hos-pital is a healed patient The result of a school is a studentwho has learned something and puts it to work ten years laterInside an enterprise there are only costs

Managers who understand these principles and function in theirlight will be achieving accomplished managers

Management as a Libera l Ar t

Thirty years ago the English scientist and novelist C P Snowtalked of the ldquotwo culturesrdquo of contemporary society Managementhowever fits neither Snowrsquos ldquohumanistrdquo nor his ldquoscientistrdquo It dealswith action and application and its test is results This makes it atechnology But management also deals with people their valuestheir growth and developmentmdashand this makes it a humanity So

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 12

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 13

__ -1__ 0__+1

does its concern with and impact on social structure and the com-munity Indeed as everyone has learned who like this author hasbeen working with managers of all kinds of institutions for longyears management is deeply involved in moral concernsmdashthenature of man good and evil

Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal artmdashldquoliberalrdquo because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge self-knowledge wisdom and leadership ldquoartrdquo because it is alsoconcerned with practice and application Managers draw on all theknowledges and insights of the humanities and the social sciencesmdashon psychology and philosophy on economics and history onethicsmdashas well as on the physical sciences But they have to focusthis knowledge on effectiveness and resultsmdashon healing a sickpatient teaching a student building a bridge designing and sellinga ldquouser-friendlyrdquo software program

For these reasons management will increasingly be the disci-pline and the practice through which the ldquohumanitiesrdquo will againacquire recognition impact and relevance

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 13

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 14

__ -1__ 0__+1

II

T H E I N D I V I D U A L

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 15

-1__0__

+1__

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 16

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

m a n a g e m e n t a s s o c i a l f u n c t i o n a n d l i b e r a l a r t 13

__ -1__ 0__+1

does its concern with and impact on social structure and the com-munity Indeed as everyone has learned who like this author hasbeen working with managers of all kinds of institutions for longyears management is deeply involved in moral concernsmdashthenature of man good and evil

Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal artmdashldquoliberalrdquo because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge self-knowledge wisdom and leadership ldquoartrdquo because it is alsoconcerned with practice and application Managers draw on all theknowledges and insights of the humanities and the social sciencesmdashon psychology and philosophy on economics and history onethicsmdashas well as on the physical sciences But they have to focusthis knowledge on effectiveness and resultsmdashon healing a sickpatient teaching a student building a bridge designing and sellinga ldquouser-friendlyrdquo software program

For these reasons management will increasingly be the disci-pline and the practice through which the ldquohumanitiesrdquo will againacquire recognition impact and relevance

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 13

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 14

__ -1__ 0__+1

II

T H E I N D I V I D U A L

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 15

-1__0__

+1__

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 16

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

13221_01Xqrk 62601 252 PM Page 14

__ -1__ 0__+1

II

T H E I N D I V I D U A L

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 15

-1__0__

+1__

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 16

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

__ -1__ 0__+1

II

T H E I N D I V I D U A L

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 15

-1__0__

+1__

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 16

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

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+1__

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 16

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

__ -1__ 0__+1

13

effect ivenes s mustbe learned

To be effective is the job of the knowledge worker Whether heor she works in a business or in a hospital in a government

agency or in a labor union in a university or in the army theknowledge worker is first of all expected to get the right things doneAnd this means simply that the knowledge worker is expected to beeffective

Yet people of high effectiveness are conspicuous by theirabsence in knowledge jobs High intelligence is common enoughamong knowledge workers Imagination is far from rare The levelof knowledge tends to be high But there seems to be little correla-tion between a manrsquos effectiveness and his intelligence his imagina-tion or his knowledge Brilliant men are often strikinglyineffectual they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not byitself achievement They never have learned that insights becomeeffectiveness only through hard systematic work Conversely inevery organization there are some highly effective plodders Whileothers rush around in the frenzy and busyness that very bright peopleso often confuse with ldquocreativityrdquo the plodder puts one foot in frontof the other and gets there first like the tortoise in the old fable

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 17

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

18 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Intelligence imagination and knowledge are essentialresources but only effectiveness converts them into results Bythemselves they only set limits to what can be attained

Why We Need Ef fect iveness

All this should be obvious But why then has so little attention beenpaid to effectiveness in an age in which there are mountains ofbooks and articles on every other aspect of the executiversquos tasks

One reason for this neglect is that effectiveness is the specifictechnology of the knowledge worker within an organization Untilrecently there was no more than a handful of these around

For manual work we need only efficiency that is the ability todo things right rather than the ability to get the right things doneThe manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantityand quality of a definable and discrete output such as a pair ofshoes We have learned how to measure efficiency and how todefine quality in manual work during the last hundred yearsmdashtothe point where we have been able to multiply the output of theindividual worker tremendously

Formerly the manual workermdashwhether machine operator orfront-line soldiermdashpredominated in all organizations Few peopleof effectiveness were needed mainly those at the top who gave theorders that others carried out They were so small a fraction of thetotal work population that we could rightly or wrongly take theireffectiveness for granted We could depend on the supply of ldquonatu-ralsrdquo the few people in any area of human endeavor who somehowknow what the rest of us have to learn the hard way

In fact only a small fraction of the knowledge workers of earlierdays were part of an organization Most of them worked by them-selves as professionals at most with an assistant Their effectivenessor lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected onlythemselves

Today however the large knowledge organization is the central

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 18

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 19

__ -1__ 0__+1

reality Modern society is a society of large organized institutions Inevery one of them including the armed services the center of grav-ity has shifted to the knowledge worker the man who puts to workwhat he has between his ears rather than the brawn of his muscles orthe skill of his hands Increasingly the majority of people who havebeen schooled to use knowledge theory and concept rather thanphysical force or manual skill work in an organization and are effec-tive insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization

Now effectiveness can no longer be taken for granted Now itcan no longer be neglected

The imposing system of measurements and tests that we havedeveloped for manual workmdashfrom industrial engineering to qualitycontrolmdashis not applicable to knowledge work There are few thingsless pleasing to the Lord and less productive than an engineeringdepartment that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for thewrong product Working on the right things is what makes knowl-edge work effective This is not capable of being measured by any ofthe yardsticks for manual work

Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detailThey can only be helped But they must direct themselves and theymust do so toward performance and contribution that is towardeffectiveness

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showed an office on thedoor of which was the legend CHAS SMITH GENERAL SALES MAN-AGER AJAX SOAP COMPANY The walls were bare except for a bigsign saying THINK The man in the office had his feet propped upon his desk and was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling Outside twoolder men went by one saying to the other ldquoBut how can we besure that Smith thinks soaprdquo

One can indeed never be sure what the knowledge workerthinksmdashand yet thinking is his or her specific work it is the knowl-edge workerrsquos ldquodoingrdquo

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his beingeffective on being able to achieve If effectiveness is lacking in hiswork his commitment to work and to contribution will soon

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 19

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

20 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

wither and he will become a time-server going through the motionsfrom nine to five

The knowledge worker does not produce something that iseffective by itself He does not produce a physical productmdasha ditcha pair of shoes a machine part He produces knowledge ideasinformation By themselves these ldquoproductsrdquo are useless Somebodyelse another person of knowledge has to take them as his input andconvert them into his output before they have any reality Thegreatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaninglessdata The knowledge worker therefore must do something that amanual worker need not do He must provide effectiveness Hecannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does awell-made pair of shoes

The knowledge worker is the one ldquofactor of productionrdquothrough which the highly developed societies and economies oftodaymdashthe United States Western Europe Japan and also increas-ingly the Soviet Unionmdashbecome and remain competitive

Who Is an Execut ive

Every knowledge worker in a modern organization is an ldquoexecutiverdquoif by virtue of his position or knowledge he or she is responsible fora contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organiza-tion to perform and to obtain results This may be the capacity of abusiness to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of agiven market It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedsidecare to its patients and so on Such a man or woman must makedecisions he cannot just carry out orders He must take responsibil-ity for his contribution And he is supposed by virtue of his knowl-edge to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyoneelse He may be overridden he may be demoted or fired But solong as he has the job the goals the standards and the contributionare in his keeping

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 20

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 21

__ -1__ 0__+1

This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper inter-view with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle

Asked by the reporter ldquoHow in this confused situation can youretain commandrdquo the young captain said ldquoAround here I amonly the guy who is responsible If these men donrsquot know what todo when they run into an enemy in the jungle Irsquom too far away totell them My job is to make sure they know What they do dependson the situation which only they can judge The responsibility isalways mine but the decision lies with whoever is on the spotrdquo

In a guerrilla war every person is an ldquoexecutiverdquoKnowledge work is not defined by quantity Neither is knowl-

edge work defined by its costs Knowledge work is defined by itsresults And for these the size of the group and the magnitude ofthe managerial job are not even symptoms

Having many people working in market research may endowthe results with that increment of insight imagination and qualitythat gives a company the potential of rapid growth and success Ifso two hundred people are cheap But it is just as likely that themanager will be overwhelmed by all the problems two hundredpeople bring to their work and cause through their interactions Hemay be so busy ldquomanagingrdquo as to have no time for market researchand for fundamental decisions He may be so busy checking figuresthat he never asks the question What do we really mean when wesay ldquoour marketrdquo And as a result he may fail to notice significantchanges in the market that eventually may cause the downfall of hiscompany

But the individual market researcher without a staff may beequally productive or unproductive He may be the source of theknowledge and vision that make his company prosper Or he mayspend so much of his time hunting down detailsmdashthe footnotesacademicians so often mistake for researchmdashas to see and hearnothing and to think even less

Throughout every one of our knowledge organizations we havepeople who manage no one and yet are executives Rarely indeed do

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 21

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

22 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

we find a situation such as that in the Vietnam jungle where at anymoment any member of the entire group may be called upon tomake decisions with life-and-death impact for the whole But thechemist in the research laboratory who decides to follow one line ofinquiry rather than another one may make the entrepreneurial deci-sion that determines the future of his company He may be theresearch director But he also may bemdashand often ismdasha chemistwith no managerial responsibilities if not even a fairly junioremployee Similarly the decision what to consider one ldquoproductrdquo inthe account books may be made by a senior vice president in thecompany It may also be made by a junior And this holds true in allareas of todayrsquos large organization

I have called ldquoexecutivesrdquo those knowledge workers managersor individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their posi-tion or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course oftheir work that have impact on the performance and results of thewhole What few yet realize however is how many people there areeven in the most humdrum organization of today whether businessor government agency research lab or hospital who have to makedecisions For the authority of knowledge is surely as legitimate asthe authority of position These decisions moreover are of thesame kind as the decisions of top management

The most subordinate we now know may do the same kind ofwork as the president of the company or the administrator of thegovernment agency that is plan organize integrate motivate andmeasure His compass may be quite limited but within his spherehe is an executive

Similarly every decision-maker does the same kind of work asthe company president or the administrator His scope may bequite limited But he is an executive even if his function or his nameappears neither on the organization chart nor in the internal tele-phone directory

And whether chief executive or beginner he needs to be effec-tive

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 22

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 23

__ -1__ 0__+1

Execut ive Rea l i t ie s

The realities of the knowledge workersrsquo situation both demandeffectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficultto achieve Indeed unless they work at becoming effective the real-ities of their situation will push them into futility

In their situation there are four major realities over which theyessentially no control Every one of them is built into the organiza-tion and into the executivesrsquo day and work They have no choicebut to ldquocooperate with the inevitablerdquo But every one of these reali-ties exerts pressure toward nonresults and nonperformance

1 The executiversquos time tends to belong to everybody else Ifone attempted to define an ldquoexecutiverdquo operationally (that isthrough his activities) one would have to define him as a captive ofthe organization Everybody can move in on his time and every-body does There seems to be very little any one executive can doabout it He cannot as a rule like the physician stick his head outthe door and say to the nurse ldquoI wonrsquot see anybody for the next halfhourrdquo Just at this moment the executiversquos telephone rings and hehas to speak to the companyrsquos best customer or to a high official inthe city administration or to his bossmdashand the next half hour isalready gone

2 Executives are forced to keep on ldquooperatingrdquo unless they takepositive action to change the reality in which they live and work

But events rarely tell the executive anything let alone the realproblem For the doctor the patientrsquos complaint is central becauseit is central to the patient The executive is concerned with a muchmore complex universe What events are important and relevantand what events are merely distractions the events themselves donot indicate They are not even symptoms in the sense in which thepatientrsquos narrative is a clue for the physician

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 23

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

24 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

what he works on and what he takes seriously he will fritter him-self away ldquooperatingrdquo He may be an excellent person But he is cer-tain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away whatlittle effectiveness he might have achieved What the executiveneeds are criteria that enable him to work on the truly importantthat is on contributions and results even though the criteria are notfound in the flow of events

3 The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectivenessis that he is within an organization This means that he is effectiveonly if and when other people make use of what he contributesOrganization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individualIt takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource the motivationand the vision of other knowledge workers Knowledge workers arerarely in synch with each other precisely because they are knowledgeworkers Each has his or her own skill and concerns One may beinterested in tax accounting or in bacteriology or in training anddeveloping tomorrowrsquos key administrators in the city governmentBut the worker next door is interested in the finer points of costaccounting in hospital economics or in the legalities of the citycharter Each has to be able to use what the other produces

Usually the people who are most important to the effectivenessof an executive are not people over whom he has direct controlThey are people in other areas people who in terms of organizationare ldquosidewaysrdquo Or they are his superiors Unless the executive canreach those people can make his contribution effective for themand in their work he has no effectiveness at all

4 Finally the executive is within an organizationEvery executive whether his organization is a business or a

research laboratory a government agency a large university or theair force sees the insidemdashthe organizationmdashas close and immediatereality He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lensesif at all What goes on outside is usually not even known firsthandIt is received through an organizational filter of reports that is inan already predigested and highly abstract form that imposes orga-nizational criteria of relevance on the outside reality

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 24

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 25

__ -1__ 0__+1

Specifically there are no results within the organization All theresults are on the outside The only business results for instance areproduced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of thebusiness into revenues and profits through his willingness toexchange his purchasing power for the products or services of thebusiness

What happens inside any organization is effort and cost Tospeak of ldquoprofit centersrdquo in a business as we are wont to do is politeeuphemism There are only effort centers The less an organizationhas to do to produce results the better it does its job That it takesone hundred thousand employees to produce the automobiles orthe steel the market wants is essentially a gross engineering imper-fection The fewer people the smaller the less activity inside themore nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reasonfor existence the service to the environment

An organization is not like an animal an end in itself and suc-cessful by the mere act of perpetuating the species An organizationis an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makesto the outside environment And yet the bigger and apparentlymore successful an organization gets to be the more will insideevents tend to engage the interests the energies and the abilities ofthe executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effective-ness in the outside

This danger is being aggravated today by the advent of the com-puter and of the new information technology The computer beinga mechanical moron can handle only quantifiable data These itcan handle with speed accuracy and precision It will thereforegrind out hitherto unobtainable quantified information in large vol-ume One can however by and large quantify only what goes oninside an organizationmdashcosts and production figures patient statis-tics in the hospital or training reports The relevant outside eventsare rarely available in quantifiable form until it is much too late todo anything about them

This is not because our information-gathering capacity inrespect to the outside events lags behind the technical abilities of the

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 25

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

26 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

computer If that was the only thing to worry about we would justhave to increase statistical effortsmdashand the computer itself couldgreatly help us to overcome this mechanical limitation The prob-lem is rather that the important and relevant outside events areoften qualitative and not capable of quantification They are not yetldquofactsrdquo For a fact after all is an event that somebody has definedhas classified and above all has endowed with relevance To beable to quantify one has to have a concept first One first has toabstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect thatone then can name and finally count

The truly important events on the outside are not the trendsThey are changes in the trends These determine ultimately successor failure of an organization and its efforts Such changes howeverhave to be perceived they cannot be counted defined or classifiedThe classifications still produce the expected figuresmdashas they did forthe Edsel But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior

The computer is a logic machine and that is its strengthmdashbutalso its limitation The important events on the outside cannot bereported in the kind of form a computer (or any other logic system)could possibly handle Man however while not particularly logicalis perceptivemdashand that is his strength

The danger is that executives will become contemptuous ofinformation and stimuli that cannot be reduced to computer logicand computer language Executives may become blind to every-thing that is perception (ie event) rather than fact (ie after theevent) The tremendous amount of computer information may thusshut out access to reality

Eventually the computermdashpotentially by far the most usefulmanagement toolmdashshould make executives aware of their insula-tion and free them for more time on the outside In the short runhowever there is danger of acute ldquocomputeritisrdquo It is a seriousaffliction

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed beforeit Executives of necessity live and work within an organization

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 26

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 27

__ -1__ 0__+1

Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside theinside may blind them to the true reality

These four realities the executive cannot change They are nec-essary conditions of his existence But he must therefore assumethat he will be ineffectual unless he makes special efforts to learn tobe effective

The Promise of Ef fect iveness

Increasing effectiveness may well be the only area where we canhope significantly to raise the level of the knowledge workerrsquos per-formance achievement and satisfaction

We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in manyplaces We could use people of broader knowledge I submit how-ever that in these two areas not too much can be expected fromfurther efforts We may be getting to the point where we are alreadyattempting to do the inherently impossible or at least the inherentlyunprofitable But we are not going to breed a new race of super-men We will have to run our organizations with men and womenas they are

The books on manager development for instance envisagetruly a ldquoman for all seasonsrdquo in their picture of ldquothe manager oftomorrowrdquo A senior executive we are told should have extraordi-nary abilities as an analyst and as a decision-maker He or sheshould be good at working with people and at understanding orga-nization and power relations be good at mathematics and haveartistic insights and creative imagination What seems to be wantedis universal genius and universal genius has always been in scarcesupply The experience of the human race indicates strongly thatthe only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetentWe will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who atbest excel in one of these abilities And then they are more thanlikely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 27

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

28 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

We will have to learn to build organizations in such a mannerthat anybody who has strength in one important area is capable ofputting it to work But we cannot expect to get the performance weneed by raising our standards for abilities let alone by hoping forthe universally gifted person We will have to extend the range ofhuman beings through the tools they have to work with rather thanthrough a sudden quantum jump in human ability

The same more or less applies to knowledge However badlywe may need people of more and better knowledge the effortneeded to make the major improvement may well be greater thanany possible let alone any probable return

When ldquooperations researchrdquo first came in several of the brilliantyoung practitioners published their prescription for the operationsresearcher of tomorrow They always came out asking for a poly-math knowing everything and capable of doing superior and origi-nal work in every area of human knowledge According to one ofthese studies operations researchers need to have advanced knowl-edge in sixty-two or so major scientific and humanistic disciplinesIf such a person could be found he would I am afraid be totallywasted on studies of inventory levels or on the programming of pro-duction schedules

Much less ambitious programs for manager development callfor high knowledge in such a host of divergent skills as accountingand personnel marketing pricing and economic analysis thebehavioral sciences such as psychology and the natural sciencesfrom physics to biology and geology And we surely need peoplewho understand the dynamics of modern technology the complex-ity of the modern world economy and the labyrinth of moderngovernment

Every one of these is a big area is indeed too big even for thosewho work on nothing else The scholars tend to specialize in fairlysmall segments of each of these fields and do not pretend to havemore than a journeymanrsquos knowledge of the field itself

I am not saying that one need not try to understand the funda-mentals of every one of these areas

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 28

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 29

__ -1__ 0__+1

One of the weaknesses of young highly educated peopletodaymdashwhether in business medicine or governmentmdashis that theyare satisfied to be versed in one narrow specialty and affect a con-tempt for the other areas One need not know in detail what to dowith ldquohuman relationsrdquo as an accountant or how to promote a newbranded product if an engineer But one has a responsibility toknow at least what these areas are about why they are around andwhat they are trying to do One need not know psychiatry to be agood urologist But one had better know what psychiatry is allabout One need not be an international lawyer to do a good job inthe Department of Agriculture But one had better know enoughabout international politics not to do international damage througha parochial farm policy

This however is something very different from the universalexpert who is as unlikely to occur as is the universal genius Insteadwe will have to learn how to make better use of people who are goodin any one of these areas But this means increasing effectiveness Ifone cannot increase the supply of a resource one must increase itsyield And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of abil-ity and knowledge yield more and better results

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs oforganization It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the exec-utive and as his access to achievement and performance

Can Ef fect iveness Be Learned

If effectiveness were a gift people were born with the way they areborn with a gift for music or an eye for painting we would be in badshape For we know that only a small minority is born with greatgifts in any one of these areas We would therefore be reduced totrying to spot people with high potential of effectiveness early andto train them as best we know to develop their talent But we couldhardly hope to find enough people for the executive tasks of modernsociety this way Indeed if effectiveness were a gift our present civ-

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 29

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

30 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

ilization would be highly vulnerable if not untenable As a civiliza-tion of large organizations it is dependent on a large supply of peo-ple capable of being executives with a modicum of effectiveness

If effectiveness can be learned however the questions ariseWhat does it consist in What does one have to learn Of what kindis the learning Is it a knowledgemdashand knowledge one learns in sys-tematic form and through concepts Is it a skill that one learns as anapprentice Or is it a practice that one learns through doing thesame elementary things over and over again

I have been asking those questions for a good many years As aconsultant I work with executives in many organizations Effective-ness is crucial to me in two ways First a consultant who by defini-tion has no authority other than that of knowledge must himself beeffectivemdashor else he is nothing Second the most effective consul-tant depends on people within the client organization to get any-thing done Their effectiveness therefore determines in the lastanalysis whether a consultant contributes and achieves results orwhether he is pure ldquocost centerrdquo or at best a court jester

I soon learned that there is no ldquoeffective personalityrdquo The effec-tive people I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and theirabilities in what they do and how they do it in their personalitiestheir knowledge their interestsmdashin fact in almost everything thatdistinguishes human beings All they have in common is the abilityto get the right things done

Among the effective people I have known and worked withthere are extroverts and aloof retiring men some even morbidlyshy Some are eccentrics others painfully correct conformists Someare fat and some are lean Some are worriers some are relaxedSome drink quite heavily others are total abstainers Some are menof great charm and warmth some have no more personality than afrozen mackerel There are a few men among them who wouldanswer to the popular conception of a ldquoleaderrdquo But equally thereare colorless men who would attract no attention in a crowd Someare scholars and serious students others almost unlettered Somehave broad interests others know nothing except their own narrow

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 30

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

e f f e c t i v e n e s s m u s t b e l e a r n e d 31

__ -1__ 0__+1

area and care for little else Some of the men are self-centered if notindeed selfish But there are also some who are generous of heartand mind There are men who live only for their work and otherswhose main interests lie outsidemdashin community work in theirchurch in the study of Chinese poetry or in modern musicAmong the effective people I have met there are people who uselogic and analysis and others who rely mainly on perception andintuition There are men who make decisions easily and men whosuffer agonies every time they have to move

Effective people in other words differ as widely as physicianshigh-school teachers or violinists They differ as widely as do inef-fectual ones are indeed indistinguishable from ineffectual people intype personality and talents

What all these effective people have in common is the practicesthat make effective whatever they have and whatever they are Andthese practices are the same whether he or she works in a businessor in a government agency as hospital administrator or as univer-sity dean

But whenever I have found one no matter how great the intelli-gence the industry the imagination or the knowledge who fails toobserve these practices I have also found one deficient in effective-ness

Effectiveness in other words is a habit that is a complex ofpractices And practices can always be learned Practices are simpledeceptively so even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in under-standing a practice But practices are always exceedingly hard to dowell They have to be acquired as we all learn the multiplicationtable that is repeated ad nauseam until ldquo6 times 6 = 36rdquo has becomeunthinking conditioned reflex and firmly ingrained habit Prac-tices one learns by practicing and practicing and practicing again

To every practice applies what my old piano teacher said to mein exasperation when I was a small boy ldquoYou will never play Mozartthe way Arthur Schnabel does but there is no reason in the worldwhy you should not play your scales the way he doesrdquo What thepiano teacher forgot to addmdashprobably because it was so obvious to

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 31

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

32 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

hermdashis that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they dounless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them

There is in other words no reason why anyone with normalendowment should not acquire competence in any practice Mas-tery might well elude him for that one might need special talentsBut what is needed in effectiveness is competence What is neededare ldquothe scalesrdquo

13221_02Xqrk 62601 253 PM Page 32

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

__ -1__ 0__+1

III

S O C I E T Y

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 33

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 34

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

__ -1__ 0__+1

23

a century of soc ialtransformat ionmdashemergence

of knowledge soc iet y

No century in human history has experienced so many socialtransformations and such radical ones as the twentieth cen-

tury They I submit will turn out to be the most significant eventsof this century and its lasting legacy In the developed free-marketcountriesmdashonly one-fifth of the earthrsquos population but the modelfor the restmdashwork and workforce society and polity are all in thelast decade of this century qualitatively and quantitatively differentboth from those of the first years of this century and from anythingever experienced before in human history different in their config-uration in their processes in their problems and in their structures

Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods trig-gered violent intellectual and spiritual crises rebellions and civilwars The extreme social transformations of this century have hardlycaused any stir They proceeded with a minimum of friction with aminimum of upheavals and indeed with altogether a minimum ofattention from scholars politicians the press and the public

To be sure this century of ours may well have been the cruelestand most violent in human history with its world wars and civilwars its mass tortures ethnic cleansings and genocides But all

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 35

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

36 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

these killings all these horrors inflicted on the human race by thiscenturyrsquos Weltbegluumlckermdashthose who establish paradise on earthby killing off nonconformists dissidents resisters and innocentbystanders whether Jews the bourgeoisie kulaks or intellectualsmdashhindsight clearly shows were just that senseless killings senselesshorrors Hitler Stalin and Mao the three evil geniuses of this cen-tury destroyed But they created nothing

Indeed if this century proves anything it is the futility of poli-tics Even the most dogmatic believer in historical determinismwould have a hard time explaining the social transformations of thiscentury as caused by the headline-making political events orexplaining the headline-making political events as caused by thesocial transformations But it is the social transformations runninglike ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented surface ofthe sea that have had the lasting indeed the permanent effectTheymdashrather than all the violence of the political surfacemdashhavetransformed the society and the economy the community thepolity we live in

Farmers and Domest ic Ser vants

Before World War I the largest single group in every country werefarmers

Eighty years ago on the eve of that war it was consideredaxiomatic that developed countriesmdashNorth America being the onlyexceptionmdashwould increasingly become unable to feed themselvesand would increasingly have to rely on food imports from nonin-dustrial nondeveloped areas

Today only Japan among major developed free-market coun-tries is a heavy importer of food (Unnecessarily somdashits weakness asa food producer is largely the result of an obsolete rice-subsidy pol-icy that prevents the country from developing a modern productiveagriculture) All other developed free-market countries have becomesurplus food producers despite burgeoning urban populations In

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 36

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 37

__ -1__ 0__+1

all these countries food production is today many times what it waseighty years agomdashin the United States eight to ten times as much

But in all developed free-market countriesmdashincluding Japanmdashfarmers today are at most 5 percent of population and workforcethat is one-tenth of what they were eighty years ago

The second-largest group in population and workforce in everydeveloped country around 1900 were live-in servants They wereconsidered as much a ldquolaw of naturerdquo as farmers were The Britishcensus of 1910 defined ldquolower middle classrdquo as a household employ-ing fewer than three servants And while farmers as a proportion ofpopulation and workforce had been steadily shrinking throughoutthe nineteenth century the numbers of domestic servants bothabsolutely and as a percentage were steadily growing right up toWorld War I Eighty years later live-in domestic servants in devel-oped countries have become practically extinct Few people bornsince World War II that is few people under fifty have even seenany except on the stage or in old films

Farmers and domestic servants were not only the largest socialgroups they were the oldest social groups too Together they werethrough the ages the foundation of economy and society the foun-dation altogether of ldquocivilizationrdquo

The Rise and Fa l l o f the Blue-co l lar Worker

One reason indeed the main reason why the transformation causedso little stir was that by 1900 a new class the blue-collar worker inmanufacturing industry (Marxrsquos ldquoproletarianrdquo) had become sociallydominant Early-twentieth-century society was obsessed with blue-collar workers fixated on them bewitched by them

The blue-collar worker became the ldquosocial questionrdquo of 1900because he was the first ldquolower classrdquo in history that could be orga-nized and stay organized

No class in history has ever risen faster than the blue-collarworker And no class in history has ever fallen faster

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 37

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

38 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

In 1883 the year of Marxrsquos death ldquoproletariansrdquo were still aminority of industrial workers The majority were then skilledworkers employed in small craft shops each containing twenty orthirty workers at most

By 1900 the term ldquoindustrial workerrdquo had become synonymouswith ldquomachine operatorrdquo in a factory employing hundreds if notthousands of people These factory workers were indeed Marxrsquosproletarians without social position without political power with-out economic or purchasing power

The workers of 1900mdashand even of 1913mdashhad no pension nopaid vacation no overtime pay no extra pay for Sunday or nightwork no health insurance (except in Germany) no unemploymentcompensation no job security whatever One of the earliest laws tolimit working hours for adult malesmdashenacted in Austria in 1884mdashset the working day at eleven hours six days a week Industrialworkers in 1913 everywhere worked a minimum of three thou-sand hours a year Their unions were still officially proscribed or atbest barely tolerated But the workers had shown their capacity tobe organized They had shown their capacity to act as a ldquoclassrdquo

In the 1950s industrial blue-collar workers had become thelargest single group in every developed country including the Com-munist ones though they were an actual majority only duringwartime They had become eminently respectable In all developedfree-market countries they had economically become ldquomiddleclassrdquo They had extensive job security pensions long paid vaca-tions comprehensive unemployment insurance or ldquolifetimeemploymentrdquo Above all they had achieved political power It wasnot only in Britain that the labor unions were considered to be theldquoreal governmentrdquo with greater power than the prime minister andParliament

In 1990 however both the blue-collar worker and his unionwere in total and irreversible retreat They had become marginal innumbers Whereas blue-collar workers who made or moved thingshad accounted for two-fifths of the American workforce in the1950s they accounted for less than one-fifth of the workforce in the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 38

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 39

__ -1__ 0__+1

early 1990smdashthat is for no more than they had accounted for in1900 when their meteoric rise had begun In the other developedfree-market countries the decline was slower at first but after 1980it began to accelerate everywhere By the year 2000 or 2010 inevery developed free-market country blue-collar industrial workerswill account for no more than one-tenth or at most one-eighth ofthe workforce Union power has been going down equally fastWhere in the 1950s and 1960s the National Union of Mineworkersin the United Kingdom broke prime ministers as if they werematchsticks Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s won election afterelection by being openly contemptuous of organized labor and bywhittling down its political power and its privileges The blue-collarworker in manufacturing industry and his union are going the wayof the farmer

His place is already being taken by a ldquotechnologistrdquo that is bypeople who work both with their hands and their theoretical knowl-edge (Examples are computer technicians or paramedical techni-cians such as X-ray technicians physical therapists medical-labtechnicians pulmonary technicians and so on who have been thefastest-growing group in the United States workforce since 1980)

And instead of a ldquoclassrdquo that is a coherent recognizabledefined and self-conscious group the blue-collar worker in manu-facturing industry may soon be just another ldquopressure grouprdquo

In contrast with Marxist and syndicalist predictions the rise ofthe industrial worker did not destabilize society On the contrary itemerged as the centuryrsquos most stabilizing social development Itexplains why the disappearance of farmer and domestic servant pro-duced no social crises

For farmer and domestic servant industrial work was an oppor-tunity It was in fact the first opportunity in social history to betteroneself substantially without having to emigrate In the developedfree-market countries every generation in the last 100 or 150 yearscould expect to do substantially better than the generation preced-ing it The main reason was that farmers and domestic servantscould and did become industrial workers

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 39

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

40 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

Because industrial workers were concentrated in groups that isbecause they worked in a large factory rather than in a small shop orin their homes there could be a systematic focus on their productiv-ity Beginning in 1881mdashtwo years before Marxrsquos deathmdashthe sys-tematic study of work of both tasks and tools has raised theproductivity of manual work (the making and moving of things) by3 to 4 percent compounded each year for a total fiftyfold increasein output per worker over a hundred years On this rest all the eco-nomic and social gains of the past century And contrary to whatldquoeverybody knewrdquo in the nineteenth centurymdashnot only Marx butall the ldquoconservativesrdquo as well such as J P Morgan Bismarck andDisraelimdashpractically all these gains have accrued to the blue-collarworker half of the gains in the form of sharply reduced workinghours (with the cuts ranging from 40 percent in Japan to 50 per-cent in Germany) half of them in the form of a twenty-fivefoldincrease in the real wages of blue-collar workers making or movingthings

There were thus very good reasons why the rise of blue-collarworkers was peaceful rather than violent let alone ldquorevolutionaryrdquoBut what explains that the fall of the blue-collar worker has beenequally peaceful and almost entirely free of social protest ofupheaval of serious dislocation at least in the United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Worker

The rise of the ldquoclassrdquo succeeding the industrial blue-collar worker isnot an opportunity to him It is a challenge The newly emergingdominant group are ldquoknowledge workersrdquo Knowledge workersamount to a third or more of the workforce in the United Statesthat is to as large a proportion as industrial blue-collar workers everwere except in wartime The majority of knowledge workers arepaid at least as well as blue-collar workers ever were or better Andthe new jobs offer much greater opportunities to the individual

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 40

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 41

__ -1__ 0__+1

Butmdashand it is a big butmdashthe new jobs require in the greatmajority qualifications the blue-collar worker does not possess andis poorly equipped to acquire The new jobs require a good deal offormal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoreticaland analytical knowledge They require a different approach towork and a different mind-set Above all they require a habit ofcontinual learning

Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move intoknowledge work or services work the way displaced farmers and dis-placed domestic workers moved into industrial work

Even in communities that were totally dependent on one or twomass-production plants that have gone out of business or have cutemployment by two-thirdsmdashsteel cities in western Pennsylvania oreastern Ohio for instance or car cities like Flint Michiganmdashunemployment rates for adult nonblack men and women fellwithin a few short years to levels barely higher than the US aver-age And that means to levels barely higher than the US ldquofull-employmentrdquo rate And there has been no radicalization ofAmericarsquos blue-collar workers

The only explanation is that for the nonblack blue-collar com-munity the development came as no surprise however unwelcomepainful and threatening to individual worker and individual familyPsychologicallymdashin terms of values perhaps rather than in terms ofemotionsmdashAmericarsquos industrial blue-collar workers must have beenprepared to accept as right and proper the shift to jobs that requireformal education and that pay for knowledge rather than for man-ual work whether skilled or unskilled

One possible factor may have been the GI Bill of Rights afterWorld War II which by offering a college education to everyreturning American veteran established advanced education as theldquonormrdquo and everything less as ldquosubstandardrdquo Another factor mayhave been the draft the United States introduced in World War IIand maintained for thirty-five years afterward as a result of whichthe great majority of American male adults born between 1920 and

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 41

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

42 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

1950mdashand that means the majority of American adults alivetodaymdashserved in the military for several years where they wereforced to acquire a high-school education if they did not alreadyhave one But whatever the explanation in the United States theshift to knowledge work from blue-collar manual work making andmoving things has largely been accepted (except in the black com-munity) as appropriate or at least as inevitable

In the United States the shift by 1990 or so had largely beenaccomplished But so far only in the United States In the otherdeveloped free-market countries in western and northern Europeand in Japan it was just beginning in the 1990s It is however cer-tain to proceed rapidly in these countries from now on and perhapsto proceed there faster than it originally did in the United StatesWill it then also proceed as it did by and large in the United Stateswith a minimum of social upheaval of social dislocation of socialunrest Or will the American development turn out to be anotherexample of ldquoAmerican exceptionalismrdquo (as has so much of Americansocial history and especially of American labor history) In Japanthe superiority of formal education and of the formally educatedperson is generally accepted so that the fall of the industrialworkermdashstill a fairly recent class in Japan and outnumbering farm-ers and domestic servants only since well after World War IImdashmaywell be accepted as appropriate as it has been in the United Statesand perhaps even more so But what about industrialized Europemdashthe United Kingdom Germany France Belgium northern Italyand so onmdashwhere there has been a ldquoworking-class culturerdquo and aldquoself-respecting working classrdquo for well over a century and wheredespite all evidence to the contrary the belief is still deeplyingrained that industrial blue-collar work rather than knowledgeis the creator of all wealth Will Europe react the way the Americanblack has reacted This surely is a key question the answer to whichwill largely determine the social as well as the economic future ofthe developed free-market countries of Europe And the answer willbe given within the next decade or so

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 42

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 43

__ -1__ 0__+1

The Emerging Knowledge Soc iety

Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge soci-ety But in many countries if not most developed countries theywill be the largest single group in the population and the workforceAnd even if outnumbered by other groups knowledge workers willbe the group that gives the emerging knowledge society its charac-ter its leadership its social profile They may not be the ruling classof the knowledge society but they already are its leading class Andin their characteristics their social position their values and theirexpectations they differ fundamentally from any group in historythat has ever occupied the leading let alone the dominant position

In the first place the knowledge worker gains access to workjob and social position through formal education

The first implication of this is that education will become thecenter of the knowledge society and schooling its key institutionWhat knowledge is required for everybody What mix of knowl-edges is required for everybody What is ldquoqualityrdquo in learning andteaching All these will of necessity become central concerns of theknowledge society and central political issues In fact it may not betoo fanciful to anticipate that the acquisition and distribution offormal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics ofthe knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of propertyand income have occupied in the two or three centuries that wehave come to call the Age of Capitalism

We can also predict with high probability that we will redefinewhat it means to be an ldquoeducated personrdquo

The knowledge society will inevitably become far more competi-tive than any society we have yet knownmdashfor the simple reason thatwith knowledge being universally accessible there are no excuses fornonperformance There will be no ldquopoorrdquo countries There willonly be ignorant countries And the same will be true for individualcompanies individual industries and individual organizations ofany kind It will be true for the individual too In fact developed

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 43

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

44 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

societies have already become infinitely more competitive for theindividual than were the societies of the early twentieth centurymdashlet alone earlier societies those of the nineteenth or eighteenth cen-turies Then most people had no opportunity to rise out of theldquoclassrdquo into which they were born with most individuals followingtheir fathers in their work and in their station in life

But knowledge workers whether their knowledge is primitiveor advanced whether they possess a little of it or a great deal willby definition be specialized Knowledge in application is effectiveonly when it is specialized Indeed it is more effective the morehighly specialized it is

Equally important is the second implication of the fact thatknowledge workers are of necessity specialists the need for themto work as members of an organization It is only the organizationthat can provide the basic continuity that knowledge workersneed to be effective It is only the organization that can convertthe specialized knowledge of the knowledge worker into perfor-mance

By itself specialized knowledge yields no performance The sur-geon is not effective unless there is a diagnosis which by and largeis not the surgeonrsquos task and not even within the surgeonrsquos compe-tence Market researchers by themselves produce only data Toconvert the data into information let alone to make them effectivein knowledge action requires marketing people production peo-ple service people As a loner in his or her own research and writ-ing the historian can be very effective But to produce theeducation of students a great many other specialists have to con-tributemdashpeople whose speciality may be literature or mathematicsor other areas of history And this requires that the specialist haveaccess to an organization

This access may be as a consultant It may be as a provider ofspecialized services But for a large number of knowledge workers itwill be as employees of an organizationmdashfull-time or part-timemdashwhether a government agency a hospital a university a business alabor union or any of hundreds of others In the knowledge soci-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 44

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 45

__ -1__ 0__+1

ety it is not the individual who performs The individual is a costcenter rather than a performance center It is the organization thatperforms

The Employee Soc iety

The knowledge society is an employee society Traditional societythat is society before the rise of the manufacturing enterprise andthe blue-collar manufacturing worker was not a society of indepen-dents Thomas Jeffersonrsquos society of independent small farmerseach being the owner of his own family farm and farming it withoutany help except for that of his wife and his children was nevermuch more than fantasy Most people in history were dependentsBut they did not work for an organization They were working foran owner as slaves as serfs as hired hands on the farm as journey-men and apprentices in the craftsmanrsquos shop as shop assistants andsalespeople for a merchant as domestic servants free or unfree andso on They worked for a ldquomasterrdquo When blue-collar work in man-ufacturing first arose they still worked for a ldquomasterrdquo

In Charles Dickensrsquos great 1854 novel Hard Times the workerswork for an ldquoownerrdquo They do not work for the ldquofactoryrdquo Only latein the nineteenth century did the factory rather than the ownerbecome the employer And only in the twentieth century did thecorporation rather than the factory then become the employerOnly in this century has the ldquomasterrdquo been replaced by a ldquobossrdquowho himself ninety-nine times out of a hundred is an employeeand has a boss himself

Knowledge workers will be both ldquoemployeesrdquo who have a ldquobossrdquoand ldquobossesrdquo who have ldquoemployeesrdquo

Organizations were not known to yesterdayrsquos social science andare by and large not yet known to todayrsquos social science

The first ldquoorganizationrdquo in the modern sense the first that wasseen as being prototypical rather than exceptional was surely themodern business enterprise as it emerged after 1870mdashwhich is

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 45

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

46 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

why to this day most people think of ldquomanagementrdquo as beingldquobusiness managementrdquo

With the emergence of the knowledge society we havebecome a society of organizations Most of us work in and for anorganization are dependent for our effectiveness and equally forour living on access to an organization whether as an organiza-tionrsquos employee or as a provider of services to an organizationmdashasa lawyer for instance or a freight forwarder And more and moreof these supporting services to organizations are themselves orga-nized as organizations The first law firm was organized in theUnited States a little over a century agomdashuntil then lawyers hadpracticed as individuals In Europe there were no law firms tospeak of until after World War II Today the practice of law isincreasingly done in larger and larger partnerships But that is alsotrue especially in the United States of the practice of medicineThe knowledge society is a society of organizations in which prac-tically every social task is being performed in and through anorganization

Most knowledge workers will spend most if not all of theirworking life as ldquoemployeesrdquo But the meaning of the term is differ-ent from what it has been traditionallymdashand not only in Englishbut in German Spanish and Japanese as well

Individually knowledge workers are dependent on the jobThey receive a wage or salary They are being hired and can be firedLegally each is an ldquoemployeerdquo But collectively they are the onlyldquocapitalistsrdquo increasingly through their pension funds and throughtheir other savings (eg in the United States through mutualfunds) the employees own the means of production In traditionaleconomics (and by no means only in Marxist economics) there is asharp distinction between the ldquowage fundrdquomdashall of which went intoconsumptionmdashand the ldquocapital fundrdquo And most social theory ofindustrial society is based one way or another on the relationshipbetween the two whether in conflict or in necessary and beneficialcooperation and balance In the knowledge society the two mergeThe pension fund is ldquodeferred wagerdquo and as such a wage fund But

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 46

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 47

__ -1__ 0__+1

it is also increasingly the main source of capital if not the onlysource of capital for the knowledge society

Equally important and perhaps more important is that in theknowledge society the employees that is knowledge workers againown the tools of production Marxrsquos great insight was the realiza-tion that the factory worker does not and cannot own the tools ofproduction and therefore has to be ldquoalienatedrdquo There was no wayMarx pointed out for workers to own the steam engine and to beable to take the steam engine with them when moving from one jobto another The capitalist had to own the steam engine and had tocontrol it Increasingly the true investment in the knowledge soci-ety is not in machines and tools It is in the knowledge workerWithout it the machines no matter how advanced and sophisti-cated are unproductive

The industrial worker needed the capitalist infinitely more thanthe capitalist needed the industrial workermdashthe basis for Marxrsquosassertion that there would always be a surplus of industrial workersand an ldquoindustrial reserve armyrdquo that would make sure that wagescould not possibly rise above the subsistence level (probably Marxrsquosmost egregious error) In the knowledge society the most probableassumptionmdashand certainly the assumption on which all organiza-tions have to conduct their affairsmdashis that they need the knowledgeworker far more than the knowledge worker needs them It is up tothe organization to market its knowledge jobs so as to obtainknowledge workers in adequate quantity and superior quality Therelationship increasingly is one of interdependence with the knowl-edge worker having to learn what the organization needs but withthe organization also having to learn what the knowledge workerneeds requires and expects

One additional conclusion because the knowledge society per-force has to be a society of organizations its central and distinctiveorgan is management

When we first began to talk of management the term meantldquobusiness managementrdquomdashsince large-scale business was the first ofthe new organizations to become visible But we have learned this

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 47

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

48 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of allorganizations All of them require managementmdashwhether they usethe term or not All managers do the same things whatever the busi-ness of their organization All of them have to bring peoplemdasheachof them possessing a different knowledgemdashtogether for joint per-formance All of them have to make human strengths productive inperformance and human weaknesses irrelevant All of them have tothink through what are ldquoresultsrdquo in the organizationmdashand havethen to define objectives All of them are responsible to thinkthrough what I call the ldquotheory of the businessrdquo that is theassumptions on which the organization bases its performance andactions and equally the assumptions that organizations make todecide what things not to do All of them require an organ thatthinks through strategies that is the means through which thegoals of the organization become performance All of them have todefine the values of the organization its system of rewards and pun-ishments and with it its spirit and its culture In all of them man-agers need both the knowledge of management as work anddiscipline and the knowledge and understanding of the organiza-tion itself its purposes its values its environment and markets itscore competencies

Management as a practice is very old The most successful exec-utive in all history was surely that Egyptian who forty-seven hun-dred years or more ago first conceived the pyramidmdashwithout anyprecedentmdashand designed and built it and did so in record timeWith a durability unlike that of any other human work that firstpyramid still stands But as a discipline management is barely fiftyyears old It was first dimly perceived around the time of WorldWar I It did not emerge until World War II and then primarily inthe United States Since then it has been the fastest-growing newbusiness function and its study the fastest-growing new academicdiscipline No function in history has emerged as fast as manage-ment and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years and surelynone has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 48

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 49

__ -1__ 0__+1

Management in most business schools is still taught as a bun-dle of techniques such as the technique of budgeting To be suremanagement like any other work has its own tools and its owntechniques But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysisimportant though it is the essence of management is not tech-niques and procedures The essence of management is to makeknowledge productive Management in other words is a socialfunction And in its practice management is truly a ldquoliberal artrdquo

The Socia l Sector

The old communitiesmdashfamily village parish and so onmdashhave allbut disappeared in the knowledge society Their place has largelybeen taken by the new unit of social integration the organizationWhere community membership was seen as fate organizationmembership is voluntary Where community claimed the entireperson organization is a means to a personrsquos end a tool For twohundred years a hot debate has been raging especially in the Westare communities ldquoorganicrdquo or are they simply extensions of the per-son Nobody would claim that the new organization is ldquoorganicrdquo Itis clearly an artifact a human creation a social technology

But who then does the social tasks Two hundred years agosocial tasks were being done in all societies by the local commu-nitymdashprimarily of course by the family Very few if any of thosetasks are now being done by the old communities Nor would theybe capable of doing them People no longer stay where they wereborn either in terms of geography or in terms of social position andstatus By definition a knowledge society is a society of mobilityAnd all the social functions of the old communities whether per-formed well or poorly (and most were performed very poorlyindeed) presupposed that the individual and the family would stayput Family is where they have to take you in said a nineteenth-century adage and community to repeat was fate To leave the

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 49

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

50 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

community meant becoming an outcast perhaps even an outlawBut the essence of a knowledge society is mobility in terms of whereone lives mobility in terms of what one does mobility in terms ofonersquos affiliation

This very mobility means that in the knowledge society socialchallenges and social tasks multiply People no longer have ldquorootsrdquoPeople no longer have a ldquoneighborhoodrdquo that controls where theylive what they do and indeed what their ldquoproblemsrdquo are allowed tobe The knowledge society by definition is a competitive societywith knowledge accessible to everyone everyone is expected toplace himself or herself to improve himself or herself and to haveaspirations It is a society in which many more people than everbefore can be successful But it is therefore by definition also asociety in which many more people than ever before can fail or atleast can come in second And if only because the application ofknowledge to work has made developed societies so much richerthan any earlier society could even dream of becoming the failureswhether poverty or alcoholism battered women or juvenile delin-quents are seen as failures of society In traditional society theywere taken for granted In the knowledge society they are an affrontnot just to the sense of justice but equally to the competence ofsociety and its self-respect

Who then in the knowledge society takes care of the socialtasks We can no longer ignore them But traditional community isincapable of tackling them

Two answers have emerged in this centurymdasha majority answerand a dissenting opinion Both have been proven to be the wronganswers

The majority answer goes back more than a hundred years tothe 1880s when Bismarckrsquos Germany took the first faltering stepstoward the welfare state The answer the problems of the social sec-tor can should and must be solved by government It is still prob-ably the answer that most people accept especially in the developedcountries of the Westmdasheven though most people probably nolonger fully believe it But it has been totally disproven Modern

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 50

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 51

__ -1__ 0__+1

government especially since World War II has become a huge wel-fare bureaucracy everywhere And the bulk of the budget in everydeveloped country today is devoted to ldquoentitlementsrdquo that is topayment for all kinds of social services And yet in every developedcountry society is becoming sicker rather than healthier and socialproblems are multiplying Government has a big role to play insocial tasksmdashthe role of policy-maker of standard setter and to asubstantial extent the role of paymaster But as the agency to runsocial services it has proven itself almost totally incompetentmdashandwe now know why

The second dissenting opinion was first formulated by me inmy 1942 book The Future of Industrial Man I argued then that thenew organizationmdashand fifty years ago that meant the large businessenterprisemdashwould have to be the community in which the individ-ual would find status and function with the plant communitybecoming the place in and through which the social tasks would beorganized In Japan (though quite independently and without anydebt to me) the large employermdashgovernment agency or businessmdashhas indeed increasingly attempted to become a ldquocommunityrdquo for itsemployees ldquoLifetime employmentrdquo is only one affirmation of thisCompany housing company health plans company vacations andso on all emphasize for the Japanese employee that the employerand especially the big corporation is the community and the suc-cessor to yesterdayrsquos village and to yesterdayrsquos family But this toohas not worked

There is a need indeed especially in the West to bring theemployee increasingly into the government of the plan communityWhat is now called ldquoempowermentrdquo is very similar to the things Italked about more than fifty years ago But it does not create a com-munity And it does not create the structure through which thesocial tasks of the knowledge society can be tackled In fact practi-cally all those tasks whether providing education or health careaddressing the anomalies and diseases of a developed and espe-cially of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse or tacklingthe problems of incompetence and irresponsibility such as those of

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 51

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

52 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

the ldquounderclassrdquo in the American citymdashall lie outside the employinginstitution

The employing institution is and will remain an ldquoorganiza-tionrdquo The relationship between it and the individual is not that ofldquomembershiprdquo in a ldquocommunityrdquo that is an unbreakable two-waybond

To survive it needs employment flexibility But increasinglyalso knowledge workers and especially people of advanced knowl-edge see the organization as the tool for the accomplishment oftheir own purposes and therefore resentmdashincreasingly even inJapanmdashany attempt to subject them to the organization as a com-munity that is to the control of the organization to the demand ofthe organization that they commit themselves to lifetime member-ship and to the demand that they subordinate their own aspirationsto the goals and values of the organization This is inevitablebecause the possessor of knowledge as said earlier owns his or herldquotools of productionrdquo and has the freedom to move to whereveropportunities for effectiveness for accomplishment and for advance-ment seem greatest

The right answer to the question Who takes care of the socialchallenges of the knowledge society is thus neither the governmentnor the employing organization It is a separate and new social sector

Increasingly these organizations of the social sector serve a sec-ond and equally important purpose They create citizenship Modernsociety and modern polity have become so big and complex that cit-izenship that is responsible participation is no longer possible Allwe can do as citizens is to vote once every few years and to pay taxesall the time

As a volunteer in the social sector institution the individual canagain make a difference

Nothing has been disproved faster than the concept of theldquoorganization manrdquo which was almost universally accepted fortyyears ago In fact the more satisfying onersquos knowledge work is themore one needs a separate sphere of community activity

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 52

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 53

__ -1__ 0__+1

The New Plura l i sm

The emergence of the society of organizations challenges the func-tion of government All social tasks in the society of organizationsare increasingly being done by individual organizations each cre-ated for one and only one social task whether education healthcare or street cleaning Society therefore is rapidly becoming plu-ralist Yet our social and political theories still assume a society inwhich there are no power centers except government To destroy orat least to render impotent all other power centers was in fact thethrust of Western history and Western politics for five hundredyears from the fourteenth century on It culminated in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries when (except in the United States)such original institutions as still survivedmdashfor example the univer-sities or the established churchesmdashall became organs of the statewith their functionaries becoming civil servants But then immedi-ately beginning in the mid-nineteenth century new centers arosemdashthe first one the modern business enterprise emerged around1870 And since then one new organization after another has comeinto being

In the pluralism of yesterday the feudalism of Europersquos MiddleAges or of Edo Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesall pluralist organizations whether a feudal baron in the Englandof the War of the Roses or the daimyomdashthe local lordmdashin EdoJapan tried to be in control of whatever went on in their commu-nity At least they tried to prevent anybody else from having controlof any community concern or community institution within theirdomain

But in the society of organizations each of the new institutionsis concerned only with its own purpose and mission It does notclaim power over anything else But it also does not assume respon-sibility for anything else Who then is concerned with the commongood

This has always been a central problem of pluralism No ear-

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 53

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

54 t h e e s s e n t i a l d r u c k e r

-1__0__

+1__

lier pluralism solved it The problem is coming back now but in adifferent guise So far it has been seen as imposing limits on theseinstitutions that is forbidding them to do things in the pursuit oftheir own mission function and interest that encroach upon thepublic domain or violate public policy The laws against discrimi-nationmdashby race sex age education health and so onmdashthat haveproliferated in the United States in the last forty years all forbidsocially undesirable behavior But we are increasingly raising thequestion of the ldquosocial responsibilityrdquo of these institutions What dothese institutions have to domdashin addition to discharging their ownfunctionsmdashto advance the public good This howevermdashthoughnobody seems to realize itmdashis a demand to return to the old plural-ism the pluralism of feudalism It is a demand for ldquoprivate hands toassume public powerrdquo

That this could seriously threaten the functioning of the neworganizations the example of the school in the United States makesabundantly clear

The new pluralism has the old problem of pluralismmdashwhotakes care of the common good when the dominant institutions ofsociety are single-purpose institutions But it also has a new prob-lem how to maintain the performance capacity of the new institu-tions and yet maintain the cohesion of society This makes doublyimportant the emergence of a strong and functioning social sectorIt is an additional reason why the social sector will increasingly becrucial to the performance if not to the cohesion of the knowledgesociety

As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource theintegration of the interestsmdashand with it the integration of the plu-ralism of a modern politymdashbegan to fall apart Increasinglynoneconomic interests are becoming the new pluralism the ldquospecialinterestsrdquo the ldquosingle-causerdquo organizations and so on Increasinglypolitics is not about ldquowho gets what when howrdquo but about valueseach of them considered to be an absolute Politics is about ldquotheright to liverdquo of the embryo in the womb as against the right of awoman to control her own body and to abort an embryo It is about

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 54

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

__ -1__ 0__+1

the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

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13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

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+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

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If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

a c e n t u r y o f s o c i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n 55

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the environment It is about gaining equality for groups alleged tobe oppressed and discriminated against None of these issues is eco-nomic All are fundamentally moral

Economic interests can be compromised which is the greatstrength of basing politics on economic interests ldquoHalf a loaf is stillbreadrdquo is a meaningful saying But ldquohalf a babyrdquo in the biblicalstory of the judgment of Solomon is not half a child Half a baby isa corpse and a chunk of meat There is no compromise possible Toan environmentalist ldquohalf an endangered speciesrdquo is an extinctspecies

This greatly aggravates the crisis of modern government News-papers and commentators still tend to report in economic termswhat goes on in Washington in London in Bonn or in TokyoBut more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmentallaws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economicinterests They lobby for and against measures theymdashand their pay-mastersmdashsee as moral spiritual cultural And each of these newmoral concerns each represented by a new organization claims tostand for an absolute Dividing their loaf is not compromising It istreason

There is thus in the society of organizations no single integrat-ing force that pulls individual organizations in society and commu-nity into coalition The traditional partiesmdashperhaps the mostsuccessful political creations of the nineteenth centurymdashno longercan integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into acommon pursuit of power Rather they become battlefields forthese groups each of them fighting for absolute victory and notcontent with anything but total surrender of the enemy

This raises the question of how government can be made tofunction again In countries with a tradition of a strong indepen-dent bureaucracy notably Japan Germany and France the civilservice still tries to hold government together But even in thesecountries the cohesion of government is increasingly being weak-ened by the special interests and above all by the noneconomicthe moral special interests

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 55

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

Since Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago political sci-ence has primarily concerned itself with power Machiavellimdashandpolitical scientists and politicians since himmdashtook it for grantedthat government can function once it has power Now increasinglythe questions to be tackled are What are the functions that govern-ment and only government can discharge and that governmentmust discharge and How can government be organized so that itcan discharge those functions in a society of organizations

The twenty-first century will surely be one of continuing socialeconomic and political turmoil and challenge at least in its earlydecades The Age of Social Transformations is not over yet And thechallenges looming ahead may be more serious and more dauntingstill than those posed by the social transformations of the twentiethcentury that have already happened

Yet we will not even have a chance to resolve these new andlooming problems of tomorrow unless we first address the challengesposed by the developments that are already accomplished facts Ifthe twentieth century was one of social transformations the twenty-first century needs to be one of social and political innovations

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 56

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

AAbboouutt tthhee AAuutthhoorr

PPeetteerr FF DDrruucckkeerr was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educatedthere and in England He received his doctorate in public andinternational law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frank-furt Germany and then worked as an economist for an interna-tional bank in London In 1927 he came to the United StatesDruckerrsquos management books and analyses of economics and soci-ety are widely read and respected throughout the world and havebeen translated into more than 20 languages He also has written alively autobiography two novels and several volumes of essays Hehas been a frequent contributor to various magazines and journalsover the years and is an editorial columnist for The Wall StreetJournal

__ -1__ 0__+1

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 57

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

CCrreeddiittss

Jacket design by Marc CohenText design by Ellen Cipriano

-1__0__

+1__

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 58

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59

__ -1__ 0__+1

If you enjoyed reading this excerpt please visit Harper-Collins Publishers to find out where to buy this and other PerfectBound e-books

Australiahttpwwwharpercollinscomau

Canadahttpwwwharpercanadacom

New Zealandhttpwwwharpercollinsconz

United Kingdomhttpwwwfireandwatercouk

United Stateswwwharpercollinscom

13221_03Xqxd 62601 257 PM Page 59