Today's LA Times: About Corporate Responsibility.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

An excellent article about Peter Drucker, who was a revolutionary thinker about business management. Boring? Not! See for yourself...

Peter Drucker's subjects included the social role of business. (December 30, 2009)

His philosophy on business management and the corporation's role in society need to be relearned by company leaders every few years.
By Michael Hiltzik

December 31, 2009

The mark of a truly revolutionary thinker is that his revolution has to be fought anew in every generation.

That's the case with Peter F. Drucker, whose teachings on business management retain their startling wisdom four years after his death at the age of 95 and seven decades after the publication of his first book -- the first of 39.

This year was the centenary of Peter Drucker's birth. It wouldn't be right to let the year expire without reviewing how his ideas apply to business today.

As is true with every revolutionary thinker, Drucker's most enduring ideas contradict conventional wisdom. That's why business leaders need to relearn his lessons every few years, and that's why his insights seem perennially fresh.

Much more at link:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik31-2009dec31,0,7045615.column

[FreakinDJ]

1. Can't trust anyone who lived through the Great Depression

about corporate responcibility

:sarcasm:

[Larkspur]

2. Drucker would be called a Communist or Socialist by Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh today

Real leaders, Drucker observed, are leaders of teams showing respect for people and their work. Nothing destroys that as efficiently as excessive CEO compensation. He maintained that the appropriate pay range was 20 to 25 times what the rank and file earned -- it's now in the hundreds.

Good business practices consider all the ramifications, not just the bottom line profit margins, but that is considered Communism or Socialism today.

[valerief]

3. In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.

Oops. Wrong Peter!!!!

:blush:

[yourout]

4. Today the Corporate philosophy is based on the Ferengi principle of....profit, profit, profit. and..

more profit.

[evan2]

5. It would be nice to find evidence that the LA Times folllowed ...

any of the advice in the article they published.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

8. Welcome to DU!

:hi:

[lunatica]

6. Thanks for the link!

Peter Druker seems to have had plenty of common sense. The methods he talked about simply make sense if you think in terms of a society being like an ecosystem where each part is dependent on all the other parts for a healthy existence. That's the way I think of it. If something is off kilter in a society the entire society will suffer and may even die.

Greed can kill societies. And probably has done so many times.

[BootinUp]

7. sounds like he was a near genius. nt

[Lionel Mandrake]

9. An important topic NOT mentioned in the article

is the disenfranchisement of shareholders of US corporations. This is important because it partially explains the obscene salaries and other benefits paid to top executives of these corporations. Nowhere else is this theft as serious as it is in the good ol' USA.