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Peter Drucker
Peter Drucker was undoubtedly the father of the academic discipline of management, not only from a theoretical point-of-view but also from a practitioner standpoint as well. He influenced management scholars and company CEOs at the same time. He published 39 books and numerous articles in management journals and magazines. He is known for some key concepts, like outsourcing, decentralization, knowledge-based work and the practice of management. What people rarely associate with him, however, was his concern about the wellbeing of employees. This was expressed early in his career in his book The Future of Industrial Man , written in 1942. He posited the view that man should not be viewed as merely another physical asset, and that organizations should be replaced by a "plant community", where an employee's social and psychological needs could be met. Although this vision never really materialized, he came back to this theme again in his 1973 book Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices , where he suggested "if the managers of our major institutions, and especially business, do not take responsibility for the common good, no one else can or will". The theme was pursued even further later in life when the book The Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization (2008) was published with colleagues posthumously, a major theme being "respect for the worker". In it he talks about employees as being human assets not liabilities. The phrase that you hear HR professionals frequently talk about "the most valuable resource is...