Laid Off From Life

November 12, 2005 10:40 PM

Peter Drucker; the Prince of Management, dead at 95. He was a visionary leader to many. I tried to look up some opposing views and could not readily find any. Peace out.
posted by Mr T (22 comments total)

I tried to look up some opposing views and could not readily find any.

He was average in bed.
posted by my sock puppet account at 10:44 PM on November 12, 2005

He really was below the radar for most progressives but I happened to work at a bookstore where his little hamster turd styled books were distributed. Drucker on this, Drucker on that, it was enough to make you puke.

Respects to his family and a coin for his eye.
posted by Mr T at 10:49 PM on November 12, 2005

First Hayek, then Popper, and now Drucker. A sad day.

I was tempted to say that all the great Viennese had died, but then I remembered that Falco is still with us.
posted by Kwantsar at 10:51 PM on November 12, 2005

I don't get it, what the hell did he do?
posted by Citizen Premier at 11:14 PM on November 12, 2005

Falco died in 1998 under the influence of cocaine and alcohol in a car accident in the Dominican Republic.
But his song Jeanny lives on.
Can't think of any great living austrians....
posted by jouke at 11:17 PM on November 12, 2005

CP; he wrote books and gave lectures that influenced the management techniques of the drones that are giving orders to half the stiffs in this country. I know it's hard to come in to it cold but he has probably had an influence on your own daily life (unless your job is to guide tourists down the Rio Grande on an inflatable raft outside Taos, New Mexico... or you know, something similar).
posted by Mr T at 11:44 PM on November 12, 2005

Drucker's influence on modern management was wide ranging, however I was struck by his views on outsourcing.

In the late 80's predicted the wave of services outsourcing that kicked off with Kodak's ground breaking $250 million deal to outsource parts of its IT operations. That amount seems small today, with many of the deals totalling in the billions and transferring thousands or even tens of thousands of jobs.

I'm completing an MBA and my dissertation focuses on outsourcing. Drucker is widely quoted; his work is seminal in the literature.
posted by Mutant at 11:44 PM on November 12, 2005

Can someone explain this to me using a SWOT analysis or Porter's 5 forces?
posted by mullacc at 1:17 AM on November 13, 2005

In the late 80's predicted the wave of services outsourcing that kicked off with Kodak's ground breaking $250 million deal to outsource parts of its IT operations.

You're going to have to explain why you think that's visionary. Seems more like stating the obvious. The search for cheaper labor to do the same job has been a constant in management practice since the industrial revolution (re: American textile jobs migrating from New England to the American South, and subsequently to Mexico and then to Asia, also relevant, similar migratory patters in other manufacturing, steel, auto assembly jobs, etc.). Technology "outsourcing" has more or less followed the same patterns that were established in other industries.
posted by psmealey at 5:13 AM on November 13, 2005

I'd often thought of Drucker as the Tony Robbins of the corporate board room. A bit of a huckster, but by no means an unintelligent person. Basically, a lightweight economist that peddled more or less common sense propositions that lacked any real insight or vision. But mostly, Drucker was someone that had gained an absurd and inexplicable level of access to the relatively small group of corporate fat cats that incestuously sit on each others boards of directors.
posted by psmealey at 5:34 AM on November 13, 2005

psmealey, except that's not true at all For the majority of the history of industry the trend has been towards vertical integration and and horizontal expansion. The sort of large-scale outsourcing that Drucker predicted and advocated is a New Thing (tm) that's only been possible as communication costs have fallen to zero. Your model of outsourcing is wrong. Outsourcing is much, much more than the simple movement of labor. For example, open source software development is a form of outsourcing that is not driven by regional price differentials. Anyways, Drucker really was a visionary. It's a shame academia never took him as seriously as he should've been.
posted by nixerman at 5:37 AM on November 13, 2005

that's only been possible as communication costs have fallen to zero.

Nixerman, I'm willing to be pursuaded, but I think the decrecases in communication costs that enable outsourcing to be economically feasible are exactly allegorical to the decreases in distribution costs (and increases in efficiency) that allowed, for example, textile and manufacturing jobs to move from the Northeast to the South and then beyond in an effort to exploit cheaper labor costs.
posted by psmealey at 5:49 AM on November 13, 2005

psmealey, outsourcing is more than exploiting regional price differences. If I had to give a short, one-sentence definition of outsourcing I'd say it's the 'situation that arises when the real transaction costs borne by a firm's management falls sharply.' The result of outsourcing isn't a firm that's just moves production from one place to another. These firms tend to grow "bigger" or stay the same size in the sense that they're still operating X factories. But a firm that does outsourcing right will grow smaller (or even disappear!) in the sense that the end up operating 0 factories. This was the key idea that Drucker and many others picked up on. In many situations, the invisible hand (the free market) can do a better job than management in terms of transaction costs. In addition to technology outsourcing movement, look at ebay, open source, and bittorent are as important examples of outsourcing.
posted by nixerman at 6:07 AM on November 13, 2005

What, no dots for Peter Drucker? The guy who argued that top executives shouldn't get more than 20x the pay of the lowest paid employee? Oh, and Mr. T: How many books did he write with "Drucker on" in the title? Two? That caused you to puke? I have outsourced my contempt for you.
posted by found missing at 6:40 AM on November 13, 2005

.
posted by AspectRatio at 6:49 AM on November 13, 2005

Yeah, Drucker was a very smart guy who opposed a lot of the trends that are causing havoc in the business world today. Read him before you dis him.
posted by languagehat at 6:49 AM on November 13, 2005

Drucker's books are quite readable. For someone like me who got through college and military service assuming that "business" was a set of dull and sometimes nefarious activities carried out by dull people, Drucker's books provided new modes of thought.

Two ideas that have stayed with me (though maybe not expressed in exactly these words) :

"Work without deadlines is work toyed with, not done."

"Working with people is difficult, but not impossible."
posted by bmckenzie at 6:56 AM on November 13, 2005

Nixerman, you've alluded to something transformational, but you haven't articulated it very well, or at least not well enough to say that my "model is wrong". I was referring to outsourcing in the sense of moving production to exploit regional cost differences. What you're alluding to is a much broader definition of outsourcing, which is intriguing. I had only read the Drucker one or two years out of B-school and I wasn't particularly impressed by him, but if he nails this stuff in terms of expressing this broader def of outsourcing, I'll be happy to eat crow and give him another shot.
posted by psmealey at 7:29 AM on November 13, 2005

"Mm, yeah. You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all T.P.S. reports now before they go out. Did you see the memo about this?"
posted by thatweirdguy2 at 7:32 AM on November 13, 2005

Who is Peter Drucker?
posted by blue_beetle at 7:45 AM on November 13, 2005

...why you think that's visionary. Seems more like stating the obvious. "

You're correct now it is obvious, just as the statement that it (outsourcing) will continue is also obvious. But we've got the benefit of almost 20 years hindsight.

Drucker had his detractors back after he made these predictions. For a while he was almost alone arguing the case. After Kodak's deal in 1989 all of sudden an entire industry started to coalesce around multiple, disparate attempts at outsourcing.

Keep in mind before 1989 Drucker was alone in predicting services would be outsourced; you're absolutely correct, the outsourcing of labour had been going on for quite a long time with industry. But services? Very few could see back then how this would come about. I doubt Drucker in the late 80's himself could have told anyone the mechanics of how this would happen. But he went out of a limb and predicted it.

Even today many people in services think their jobs can't be outsourced. Drucker didn't seem to think the outsourcing of services had really taken off yet.
posted by Mutant at 9:09 AM on November 13, 2005

.
posted by tozturk at 11:30 AM on November 13, 2005