The Practice of Management.

First edition, presentation copy, inscribed by the author to "Fred J. Borch, whom this book and I owe so much, Peter F. Drucker". In 1954, Borch (1910-1995) had just been appointed vice president of marketing at General Electric; he would subsequently serve as the company's president, and then chairman in the 1960s. Drucker (1909-2005) began his long professional relationship with GE in the early 1950s, where Borch became a close collaborator: his is the first name from GE acknowledged in Drucker's preface. The Practice of Management, which draws heavily on Drucker's time at GE, proposes the concept of management by objectives - whereby a manager's function is purely to set goals, not to direct workers on how to achieve them. Drucker's inscription is on the front free endpaper, while the faint near-contemporary ink signature of Donald W. Moffett, possibly the electrical engineer and manager, is on the front jacket panel. A later ink stamp on the front free endpaper indicates that this copy subsequently passed to the research library of Drucker & Borch's old division at GE. Octavo. Original red cloth, spine ruled and lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. Contemporary pencil sidelining and annotations on p. 52; black ink stamp "Aug 8 1958" on rear pastedown. Light bumping and rubbing, faint sunning to spine; minor foxing, toning, and creasing to unclipped jacket, loss to spine ends and upper margin of front cover: a very good copy in like jacket.…