Technology, Management and Society

This collects essays Drucker wrote through the 1950s and 1960s on technology, its history, and its relationship to management and to social organisation.

The historical essays argue that technology should be understood as a social phenomenon rather than as a sequence of inventions. His piece on the first technological revolution argues that irrigation civilisation, not the industrial revolution, was the transformation that created the institutions of organised human society: permanent settlement, specialised labour, government, taxation, standing armies, writing and law all follow from the requirement to manage water at scale. His treatment of the industrial revolution argues its distinguishing feature was the systematic application of knowledge to work rather than the machines themselves.

The management essays cover long-range planning, which he argues is not about predicting the future but about deciding what to do now in view of an unpredictable one, and the specific claim that the important question is not what will happen but what has already happened that will have consequences. His concept of the futurity of present decisions, meaning that every decision commits resources to a future whose conditions are unknown, is stated here.

He also covers automation, which he argued would not produce mass unemployment but would change the composition of work toward knowledge, and the social responsibilities of the corporation.

The collection is from 1970 and the specific technological subjects are dated. The historical arguments about technology as social organisation and the treatment of planning under uncertainty are the durable contributions.

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.

NYU, Claremont Graduate University