Peter Drucker

The Economist:

The most enduring guru of them all, Peter Drucker (1909-2005) was the author of more than three dozen books, translated into almost as many languages. In 1997 McKinsey Quarterly said: "In the world of management gurus, there is no debate. Peter Drucker is the one guru to whom other gurus kowtow." But unlike some of those that might have kowtowed to him, Drucker was a guru with charm who never set out to diminish others. Some commentators have remarked that although he was firmly embedded in the human-relations school of management--along with Douglas McGregor (see article) and Warren Bennis (see article), for example--the guru he himself most admired was Frederick Winslow Taylor, the father of "scientific" management.

Though born in Vienna, Drucker started his professional life in Frankfurt as a financial reporter, and he never lost his journalistic eye for a witty aphorism or a memorable metaphor. His writing is never dull, but nor is it superficial, in a field where both dullness and superficiality are common. He brought to it a Renaissance breadth of knowledge, and was as likely to refer to his beloved Jane Austen as to Taylor. Rosabeth Moss Kanter once wrote: "In the Drucker perspective ... quality of life, technological progress and world peace are all the products of good management ... at root, Drucker is a management Utopian, descended as much from Robert Owen as Max Weber."