Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Drucker faculty collaborates on book expounding on Drucker’s multi-faceted legacy
Peter Drucker was a professor at CGU for over 30 years, and was still teaching up to the age of 92. He passed away on November 11, 2005, two weeks after the publication of his last book. During a Drucker School faculty meeting, in the spring of 2007, a remarkable thing happened. Spontaneously, without prompting or provocation, the entire Drucker faculty coalesced around the idea of developing a course, together, where they could build upon and honor the intellectual foundations that Peter Drucker had laid down for all of them. It was to be a new course; a different course; a transdisciplinary course. It was a course inspired by Peter Drucker and was meant to continue building the Drucker legacy, extending it into the future through teaching at the school. The class has been a huge success; it is now required for MBA and EMBA students. Since there are Peter Drucker admirers around the world, and they can’t all enroll in this unique course, the faculty decided to capture the essence of it in a book. As a result of four semesters of faculty collaboration, the book The Drucker Difference: What the World’s Greatest Management Thinker Means to Today’s Business Leaders, based on the class, was born. Led by Drucker Professor Craig L. Pearce and his colleagues and coeditors, Drucker Professor Joseph Maciariello and Drucker Associate Dean Hideki Yamawaki, the book contains 16 chapters based on the syllabus from the class. Each chapter explains a single, classic aspect of Drucker’s work, examines its implications in today’s business environment, and applies an up-to-date and contemporary interpretation of Drucker’s wisdom. “This is a major product extending Drucker’s work,” said Maciariello, who recently revised Drucker’s groundbreaking work, Management, and who is considered one of the world’s foremost Drucker scholars. “Each chapter builds further on his research, and takes it even further, based on different areas on management.” In his forward to the book, business author/philosopher Charles Handy writes of The Drucker Difference, “This book provides a veritable cornucopia of ideas that extends the intellectual fruit cultivated by the master horticulturist, Peter Ferdinand Drucker. As such, it is a living, breathing, organic document.” Many of the world’s other foremost business leaders have noted the unique value of the collection. “This compilation of smart essays on the ‘Drucker difference’ illustrates how astonishingly wide the wings of Drucker’s wisdom have spread. We all stand gratefully in his shadows, silent in awe,” said Warren Bennis, professor emeritus at the University of Southern California. Bob Buford, chairman of CGU’s own Drucker Institute and founder of the Leadership Network, noted that “Peter Drucker is more than a ‘management writer.’ He literally created the foundation on which a Functioning Society rests. In The Drucker Difference, Peter’s closest colleagues extend and amplify his tour de force body of ideas and ideals. It is the next step forward.” “Much has been written by and about my friend and mentor, Peter Drucker,” noted C. William Pollard, chairman emeritus of the ServiceMaster Company. “But this book is different. It is written by those who knew and understood him as friends and faculty colleagues and reflects his thoughts and principles as they are currently being taught to those who will be making a difference for tomorrow.”
