|
That Drucker's influence extends well past Wall Street and Washington is also attested to by a lengthy entry on him in the Whole Earth Catalog, the most important reference work of American alternative culture. This also comes as no surprise, as Drucker teaches that "management is no specific peculiarity of business enterprises, but rather the specific organ of all institutions of modern society." Even with non-profit organizations, financial backers no longer pay for good intentions, but for performance and effectiveness. The sponsorship of non-profit organizations, especially in the social sector, is one of Drucker's personal concerns. For a long time, he has done consulting free of charge for social welfare and charitable organizations, which he considers to make essential contributions to the functioning of a civil society of solidarity.
Drucker also admonishes private enterprise to realize the unity of effectiveness and ethics. He is concerned about the development of an aggressive capitalism which disregards social aspects: "Free enterprise cannot be justified as being good for business. It can be justified only as being good for society." Yet Drucker holds the free market economy to be the best system for securing democracy and human rights against political extremism. And he is optimistic that contemporary society will master the rapid social and technological transitions now taking place: "We had two world wars, and a depression, and a Hitler, and a Stalin and a Mao, and we one way or another survived them all and recovered from them. Nobody in the 1920s could imagine that you could do anything than restore yesterday. And since you cannot restore yesterday, nothing worked. Today people roll up their sleeves and say: Well, what do we have to do?"
<< Biography
|
