Peter Drucker may be best known, especially in the United States, as a writer on business and management, but, in fact, these subjects are neither his first nor have they been his foremost intellectual concern. Most of his books on management deal less with strategy and results than with the nature of the corporation as an expression of human effort and a social institution. From the time of his intellectual apprenticeship in Europe to the present day, Drucker’s primary concern has been community, in which the individual has status, and society in which the individual has function. He has brought together selections from his vast writings on these subjects in A Functioning Society. The materials in this volume are drawn both from his published books and from previously uncollected writings. Together, they present the full range of Drucker’s thought on community, society, and the political structure, and constitute an ideal introduction to his ideas.
The volume is divided into seven parts. The selections in parts 1 and 2 were mostly written during World War II and in the wake of the Great Depression. They seek to define the functioning society in the modern industrial world from a historical perspective, and to identify institutions that could recreate community, the collapse of which produced totalitarianism in Europe. Part 3 deals with the limits of governmental competence in the social and economic realm. It contains some of Drucker’s most influential writings, concerned as he is here with the difference between big government and effective government. The chapters in part 4 explore the rise of organiations, or autonomous centers of power outside of government and within society. These include business corporations, but also universities, unions, hospitals, and community organiations. Part 5 contains chapters from Drucker’s pathbreaking work on the corporation as a social organiation rather than merely an economic one. This was a controversial concept in 1946; today it is taken for granted. The rise of the so-called “knowledge industries” forms the background for part 6, in which Drucker explores the meaning of the shift from a society, economy, and polity based on manual work and skill to one based on knowledge and knowledge workers. The concluding part 7 is devoted entirely to Drucker’s long essay “The Next Society.” Here Drucker examines the emergence of new institutions and new theories arising from the information revolution and the social changes they are helping to bring about.
In organiing these representative writings, Drucker has chosen to be topical rather than merely chronological, with each excerpt presenting a basic theme of his work. He selected his contributions as well for their literary quality and accessibility to the general reader. As is characteristic of his work, A Functioning Society will attract both the general reader as well as a cross-disciplinary scholarly readership.
