Peter F. Drucker, the down-to-earth business thinker who defined the role of management guru, died Friday at his home in Claremont. He was 95.
During more than 60 years as an author, professor and consultant to some of America's biggest corporations, Drucker challenged people's thinking about organizations and popularized the notion of the postindustrial "knowledge worker."
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Monday November 14, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 2 inches; 90 words Type of Material: Correction
Drucker obituary -- An obituary for management guru Peter F. Drucker in Saturday's Section A reported incorrect information on his survivors. The article said Drucker's son, Vincent Drucker, lived in San Rafael, Calif. He lives in Dallas. The article also said daughter Cecily Drucker lived in San Francisco. She lives in Mill Valley, Calif. The name of another daughter, Kathleen Spivack of Watertown, Mass., was omitted from the list of survivors. Also, daughter Joan Winstein was identified as Joan Weinstein. Audrey Drucker was incorrectly identified as one of Drucker's daughters.
"Peter could look around corners," philanthropist Eli Broad, who knew Drucker for 30 years, said Friday. "He would say things that seemed rather simple but in fact were very profound. He saw the future."
Former General Electric Co. Chairman Jack Welch credited a pithy question from Drucker with helping him understand how to restructure the far-flung GE empire, a sometimes-wrenching process that turned the company into a stock market dynamo and made Welch one of America's most celebrated managers.
"Drucker said: 'If you weren't already in this business, would you enter it today? And if not, what are you going to do about it?' " Welch recalled Friday night. "Simple, right? But incredibly powerful."
Drucker's simple question ultimately led to Welch's operating maxim that if a GE unit could not be No. 1 or No. 2 in its field, it should be jettisoned.
Claremont Graduate University said Drucker died of natural causes. He was the Marie Rankin Clarke professor of social sciences and management at Claremont from 1971 to 2003, and he continued to write and consult from the campus until his death.
Drucker was often called the "father of modern management." But on the occasion of his 90th birthday, he described his life work much more simply:
"I looked at people, not at machines or buildings," he said. That approach led to nearly three dozen books and thousands of articles that formed nothing less than a guide to the 20th century economy.
The former newspaperman did not think up economic theories or elaborate systems of business operation. Rather he looked at people working, put them in historical context and saw a new liberal art: management.
"Unlike many philosophers, he spoke in plain language that resonated with ordinary managers," Intel Corp. co-founder Andrew S. Grove said in a statement. "Consequently, simple statements from him have influenced untold numbers of daily actions; they did mine over decades."
