Post-Capitalist Society - Hardcover

Drucker, Peter Ferdinand

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0887306209 ISBN 13: 9780887306204

Publisher: Harpercollins, 1993

Synopsis

Discusses the history of capitalism and shows readers how the new global landscape will radically affect society, politics, and business

About this title

About the Author:

Born in Vienna in 1909, Peter F. Drucker was educated in Austria and England. From 1929 he was a newspaper correspondent abroad and an economist for an international bank in London. Since 1937 he has been in the United States, first as an economist for a group of British banks and insurance companies, and later as a management consultant to several of the country's largest companies, as well as leading companies abroad. Drucker has since had a distinguished career as a teacher, first as Professor of Politics and Philosophy at Bennington College, then for more than twenty years as Professor of Management at the Graduate Business School of New York University. Since 1971 he has been Clarke Professor of Social Science at Claremont Graduate School in California. In addition to his management books, Peter Drucker is also renowned for his prophetic books analysing politics, economics and society. These books span fifty years of modern history beginning with The End of Economic Man (1939) and including The Practice of Management; Innovation and Entrepreneurship; Managing in the Next Society; Management Challenges in the 21st Century; The Effective Executive and The Essential Drucker.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Perceptive takes on the ``postcapitalist'' era, which, according to Drucker (Managing for the Future, 1992, etc.), got under way shortly after WW II. Every few centuries, the author notes, the West undergoes a convulsive transformation that, within 50 or so years, ushers in a whole new world. Identifying the Renaissance and Industrial Revolution as prior turning points, he asserts that the Global Village is in the midst of another watershed makeover that has already caused substantive changes in its economic, moral, political, and social landscapes. Drucker argues, for instance, that the same forces that put paid to Marxism as an ideology and Communism as a social system are making capitalism obsolete as well. In other words, knowledge (not labor, land, or other forms of capital) has become the planet's primary resource. The emergence of so-called ``knowledge workers'' able to put their specialized learning and/or competencies to use, he says, suggests that employees now own ``the means of production.'' Although the author concludes that markets will remain the effective integrators of economic activity, he believes that the implications of the ongoing shift will prove increasingly significant for the management of commercial enterprises and other key institutions. The same holds true for what Drucker designates ``the post-capitalist polity,'' in which transnational, regional, nation-state, even tribal structures compete and coexist. As concerned with prescription as description, the author doesn't shy away from calls to action that could make the unstable new world he envisions more productive and peaceable. He advocates, for example, the encouraging of environments that permit corporations to focus on their core responsibilities via partnerships or alliances, and the nurturing of autonomous nonprofit organizations that will restore the bonds of community as well as deliver grass-roots services. A thinking person's guide to the challenging world ahead. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harpercollins
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0887306209
• ISBN 13: 9780887306204
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 232