In “The Future of Industrial Man,” published in 1942, Peter F. Drucker defined the concept of a “functioning society,” an idea that animated much of his thought over the remainder of his long career. For Drucker, a functioning society was foundational to human life: “man in his social and political existence must have a functioning society just as he must have air to breathe in his biological existence.” Sixty years later, when Drucker published a collection of his most influential writings, he appropriately titled it “A Functioning Society.”
While Drucker is often called the “Father of Modern Management,” his consistent engagement with the concept of a functioning society shows that his interests extended far beyond the boardroom. Many of his books weren’t specifically about business or management but were more broadly concerned with community, society, and what he called “polity.”
These themes motivated Drucker from the time he began studying social and political theory as a young law student in the city of Hamburg in the late 1920s.
“A Functioning Society” contains excerpts from some of Drucker’s most famous writings, including “The Future of Industrial Man,” “Concept of the Corporation,” published soon after the the Second World War ended in 1946, and “Management Challenges for the 21st Century,” published in 1991. The compilation also includes writings on the rise of the “knowledge worker” in advanced economies and the effect this shift has and will have for developed economies.
While many of Drucker’s best-known works were first published more than 70 years ago, his thinking about politics, technology, and society is remarkably prescient when considered in relation to the challenges we face today.
For the first time, “A Functioning Society” is now available as an audiobook on Audible.
PREFACE
“Man in his social and political existence must have a functioning society just as he must have air to breathe in his biological existence.”
ESSAY
Creating a Functioning Society Today
Decades ago, at the height of the Second World War, Peter F. Drucker wrote that “man in his social and political existence must have a functioning society just as he must have air to breathe in his biological existence.” But the fact that man needs a functioning society doesn’t necessarily mean that he is a participant in one. “Nobody calls the mass of unorganized, panicky, stampeding humanity in a shipwreck a ‘society’,” Drucker wrote. In this case, “there is no society, though there are human beings in a group. Actually, the panic is directly due to the breakdown of a society.”
Michael H. Kelly
Executive Director
The Drucker Institute
AUTHOR