One of the greatest management handbooks

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	• The Practice of Management Peter F. Drucker Collins Business, 2006 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 15 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Great Book!

This is a must read for anyone interested in management, albeit written 40 years ago, many of the things in this book is part of today's B-School's curriculum.

One of the greatest management handbooks

The late Peter F. Drucker is the most influential management thinker of the 20th Century. This book was first published in 1955 and consists of five parts plus a proper introduction and conclusion. Drucker, in the Preface, explains that the first aim of this book "is to narrow the gap between what can be done and what is being done, between the leaders in management and the average".

The Introduction - The Nature of Management - consists of three chapters. Within the first chapter Drucker explains that "the manager is the dynamic, life-giving element in every business" and that management "is the organ of society specifically charged with making resources productive, that is, with the responsibility for organized economic advance." In the second chapter Drucker explains that "management is the least known and the least understood of our institutions" and discusses the three functions of management: managing a business, managing managers, and to manage workers and work. The third chapter states that management faces its first test of its competence and its hardest task in the then imminent industrial revolution called `automation'. Drucker does explain that automation is not `technical', but primarily a system of concepts, a concept of the organization of work.

The first of six chapters within Part I - Managing a Business - uses the Sears, Roebuck & Company as an illustration of what business is and what managing it means. Based upon this illustration, Drucker concludes in Chapter 5 that "there is only one valid definition of business: to create a customer. ... It is the customer who determines what a business is." Chapter 6 introduces Drucker's most famous question: "What is our business - and what should it be?" This does look relatively simple, but it is not simple to answer and the author provides guidance. In the next chapter the objectives of a business are discussed: "Objectives are needed in every area where performance and results directly and vitally affect the survival and prosperity of the business." Chapter 8 discusses the tools that management needs to take make decisions today for the result of tomorrow. But no matter how sound the business economics, how careful the analysis, how good the tools, managing a business always comes back to the human element. This is the subject of Chapter 9, which deals with the principles of production.

The first of the six chapters within Part II - Managing Managers - uses automobile company Ford to explain that the "fundamental problem or order, structure, motivation and leadership in the business enterprise have to be solved in the managing of managers." But he also warns that managers are its scarcest resource. Drucker also introduces the major requirements of managing managers, which are detailed in the next five chapters.

The first of the three chapters within Part III - The Structure of Management - discusses the issue of organization structure. The next chapter is concerned with building the structure. Chapter 18 deals with the small, the large and the growing business, which Drucker breaks down into four stages of business size (small, fair-sized, large, very large business). He discusses the problems and potential solutions for each.

The six chapters within Part IV - The Management of Worker and Work - discuss the human elements of business. Drucker uses IBM as an example to show basic problems in managing worker and work, and some of the principles for their solution. He also emphasizes that the management of worker and work is a complex subject. Within Chapter 20 he discusses the worker as a resource, the demands of the enterprise on the worker, the worker's demands on the enterprise, and the economic dimension. The next chapter explains that although personnel management is not bankrupt ("but certainly insolvent") the relationship between a man and the kind of work he does is known due to the Human-Relations school. Chapter 22 details human organization for peak performance or in Drucker's words "the engineering of the individual job for maximum efficiency." The fourth chapter in this section discusses the economic relationship between enterprise and worker. This is followed by chapters on the first-line supervisor and on the professional employee (who is neither management nor labor).

The title of the final part - What It Means to be a Manager - gives away the subject for the three chapters. Drucker believes that a manager has two specific tasks: "The manager has the task of creating a true whole that is larger than the sum of its parts, a productive entity that turns out more than the sum of the resources put into it. ...This task requires the manager to bring out and make effective whatever strength there is in his resources - and above all in the human resources - and neutralize whatever there is of weakness." This requires the manager to balance and harmonize the three major functions of the business enterprise: managing a business, managing managers, and managing worker and work. Chapter 28 deals with decision making. The five phases in decision-making are discussed. The final chapter discusses the manager of tomorrow. Based upon the new demands required, the manager of tomorrow has to acquit himself of seven new tasks.

The book is concluded with a proper conclusion on the responsibilities of management. "... the business enterprise must be so managed as to make the public good become the private good of the enterprise. ...To make certain that this assertion does not remain lip service but becomes hard fact is the most important, the ultimate responsibility of management: to itself, to the enterprise, to our heritage, to our society and to our way of life."

What can one say about a masterpiece like this? Books by Peter Drucker always deserve five stars since they are eye-openers to most of us, but this one is exceptional and possibly the best I have read by him. Highly recommended to anybody involved with management or working within business enterprise, it provides great insights for employees through to chief executive.

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Worth reading.

To say that this book is remarkably relevant for a publication dating back to 1954 is little better than pointing out that getting out of bed is a prerequisite to a good day's work, or that the 1920 - 1930 architecture of Mies van der Rohe is still the cornerstone of today's architecture. That said, there are many good things to consider with regard to managing a PRIVATE business.

Much is made of management's responsibilities toward society. But this seems to me to be proposed from the context of fear and/or reprisal if management doesn't accept such a responsibility. Furthermore, as the example of `the mystery of the washroom doors' made clear, the managed are content to axe down a washroom door in preference to spending twenty cents of their own money to purchase a new key to replace a lost key, and let the thousands of dollars worth of repair bills fall to management whose fault it was for making a claim for new keys too difficult. `That'll learn em!'

The biggest impediment to management as advocated in this book, is government. Government in consort with a myriad of non-elected bodies now compels a business, through draconian legislation, to conform to a specified role in society. In Drucker's day, this was more a matter of choice. However, with the politically sound MBA acting as the government's executive we have returned to a situation very similar to that of post-revolution Russia where the business was an adjunct of government. This is why the disparity in executive pay compared to the general labour is so acute today. And why this book is outdated.

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A fundamental text!

The multifaceted and dynamic world in which we live obligates the actual management to act and react with leonine fierceness, his capacity for being actually in the multiple areas of knowledge, information, behavior patterns, changing consumer habits, emotional intelligence and the undeniable advances in the informatics technology, require a focused man, concentrated but in the meantime deeply informed about an increasing wave of new advances in this competitive environment where the lesser slip an dictate the irreversible failure.
Despite the famous article of Henry Mintzberg in 1993 in Harvard Business Review about the fall of the strategic planning, this text is an important guide in which you will find devices, tools to improve your own skills.
The greatness of this book is its actuality and that goes beyond another virtue, in a world that goes forward with giant steps.
Go for this admirable book in which you will know important anecdotes, and valuable information about the fascinating and every time much more4 exigent and demanding Management Science (or Art?, perhaps?).

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A good management book

A bit dated, but if this book was followed I still think the work place would be much better.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3

A classic since its publication in 1954, The Practice of Management was the first book to look at management as a whole and being a manager as a separate responsibility. The Practice of Management created the discipline of modern management practices. Readable, fundamental, and basic, it remains an essential book for students, aspiring managers, and seasoned professionals.

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