Role of management and executives in the conceptual age
Role of management and executives in the conceptual age
I was a student of Peter Drucker at Drucker School of management. I followed Drucker’s work for over ten years. As the legendary management guru often said that one could not manage change, whether it was a change in market demand, political climate or a change in socio-economic dynamics, but one could and must sense the change and prepare to stay ahead of the curve. With the current changing climate of the global socio-political landscape, this statement has never been more relevant. Before Peter Drucker literally introduced formal management to mega corporations of the likes of GM and GE, corporations had run on an industrial, labor driven model instead of a knowledge based structure. The knowledge economy that Drucker significantly contributed has survived and operated effectively to this day. Well run companies learned to value knowledge workers and define roles of management in a way that benefited the whole organization and the national economy. As much as I commend and look up to Drucker’s economic and management model based on ‘knowledge workers’ – the term he famously coined, the time has come to rethink the roles of management and administrators both in the private and government sectors.
For the last 50 years, the current management model survived in spite of critics who complained that executive pay and the power they possessed were beyond rational comprehension… and the market stayed steadfast stating that only time would correct the coarse. That time is now. It is becoming apparent that this structure is not going to last very long. It will become increasingly harder to justify large executive pay and benefits in the middle of the crisis brewing on the Wall Street. This combination of old fashioned executives, mixed with the governance formed to tackle the issues of the last century, has failed to understand the desperate need to address the urgency to develop the conceptual economy.
It is becoming clearer that America needs to regain its competitive advantage by increasing innovation at the grass roots level.
