Peter F. Drucker

Drucker, Peter Ferdinand - 1907–, American economist, b. Vienna, Austria. After receiving a doctorate in international and public law from Frankfurt Univ. (1931), Drucker was a financial writer for a German newspaper. In 1933 he moved to London, then to the United States (1937), where he became a freelance writer. After teaching at New York Univ. (1950–71), he joined the faculty of Claremont Graduate Univ. (1971–). In 1987, Claremont named its graduate management school after him. Drucker is best known as an authority on corporate management; among his ideas in the 1970s was the shift from traditional assembly lines to flexible production methods. He also helped found (1990) the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management. He has written more than 30 books, including The End of Economic Man (1939), Future of Industrial Man (1942), Concept of the Corporation (1946), The Practice of Management (1954), Drucker on Asia (with Isao Nakauchi, 1997), Management Challenges for the 21st Century (1999), and the autobiographical Adventures of a Bystander (1979).

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