An Introductory View of Management
Summary
Drucker wrote this in 1977 as a condensed teaching version of his much longer Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, intended for students and for managers coming to the subject for the first time.
The content restates the framework he developed across his career. Management is a discipline with its own body of knowledge rather than a set of personal characteristics. Its three tasks are to achieve the specific purpose of the institution, to make work productive and workers effective, and to manage the institution's social impacts and responsibilities. The business must define what its business is, which requires deciding who the customer is and what the customer considers value, and the answer is neither obvious nor stable.
The practical framework includes management by objectives and self-control, in which managers set their own objectives against the organisation's goals and measure their own performance rather than being directed; the distinction between effectiveness, meaning doing the right things, and efficiency, meaning doing things right, with the argument that the first matters more; the systematic abandonment of activities that no longer serve a purpose; the requirement that decisions specify what results are expected and be reviewed against them; and the analysis of how to make staffing decisions, which Drucker treated as the decisions managers make worst.
He also covers innovation, the management of service institutions including government and non-profits, and the responsibilities of the manager as a professional.
The book is a summary and adds nothing to the larger work it condenses. Its examples are from the 1960s and 1970s. Drucker's method is observation and assertion rather than research, and readers wanting empirical support will not find it. It remains a clear statement of the framework for someone who will not read the longer book.
Key takeaways 7
- Management is a discipline with a body of knowledge rather than a set of personal characteristics.
- An institution must define what its business is by deciding who the customer is and what that customer considers value.
- Effectiveness, meaning doing the right things, matters more than efficiency, meaning doing things right.
- Managers should set their own objectives against organisational goals and measure their own performance rather than being directed.
- Systematic abandonment of activities that no longer serve a purpose is a required management practice, not an occasional exercise.
- Every significant decision should specify the results expected and be reviewed against what actually happened.
- Staffing decisions are the decisions managers make worst, and improving them requires a deliberate process rather than judgement.
Who should read it
Managers who want Drucker's framework in condensed form without reading the full-length treatment.
About Peter F. Drucker
Management writer and consultant; professor at Bennington, NYU and Claremont Graduate University
He invented management as a field of study, and The Practice of Management and The Effective Executive remain the primary sources every later writer builds on.
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