At this time, Drucker began his activities as a business consultant: In 1942, in his book The Future of Industrial Man, he had dealt with the development of society in the twentieth century and had come to the conclusion that the society of industrialized states had been transformed into a "society of organizations." Drucker was thereby primarily interested in the political aspect, as the decision-makers in these organizations exercised social power, which Drucker did not see to be defined and legitimated. But an historically novel phenomenon also caught his interest: the large-scale corporation. As a result of his book, Drucker was invited by General Motors in 1943 to conduct a two-year social-scientific analysis of the - at that time world's largest - corporation. For almost two years, he took part in every board meeting, analysed decision-making and production processes, and conducted countless interviews with top managers, department heads, and simple workers. In 1946 Drucker published the results of this study in his Concept of the Corporation, thereby laying the foundations of management as a scientific discipline.

Since then, Drucker has done consulting for nearly every major corporation, including General Electric, Coca-Cola, Citicorp, IBM and Intel, but also for numerous governmental and non-governmental organizations both home and abroad. Since the forties, Drucker has made the personal acquaintance of, as well as advised, nearly every key figure of the American economy: starting with Alfred Sloan, the legendary first general director of General Motors, and his colleague Charles E. Wilson, who with GM developed the model of retirement funds, to today's captains of industry like Jack Welch of General Electric and Andrew Grove of Intel. Both expressed the highest praise for Drucker in a 1997 cover story of the American economic magazine Forbes. Grove was quoted as saying: "Drucker is a hero of mine. He writes and thinks with such exquisite clarity - a standout among a bunch of muddled fad mongers."

In his books, and as a columnist for the Wall Street Journal and regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review, Drucker has foreseen at an early date all of the important developments of the last decades: privatisation and decentralization, the triumph of retirement funds, the rise of Japan to economic world power, the decisive importance of marketing, time management, and the emergence of the information society with its necessity of lifelong learning.

>> How Drucker lives and works in Claremont