The Frontiers of Management

The Frontiers of Management is a collection of articles Peter Drucker wrote between 1981 and 1986 for The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Forbes and other publications. It consists of an interview, 35 articles and essays, and an afterword, arranged in four parts: "Economy," "People," "Management" and "Organization." The economy section discusses the structural transformation of the world economy, America's entrepreneurial job-creation mechanism, the fate of OPEC, the changing multinational corporation, exchange-rate risk management, Europe's high-tech ambitions, and the rules of the Japanese market and trade with Japan. The people section focuses on the basic principles of selecting and employing people, how to measure white-collar productivity, the decline of the first-line supervisor, executive pay, the relationship between business and education, and the growing mismatch between work and people. The management section covers the management problems that success creates, controlling staff work, cutting middle management, the information-based organization, the predicament of trade unions, and the argument that "management is a liberal art." The organization section deals with hostile takeovers, five principles of successful mergers, the innovative organization, the zero-growth company, the returns on automation, and cases such as IBM's Watson and the breakup of the Bell System. The thread running through the book is that tomorrow's decisions are conceived today, and that change is both threat and opportunity. Drucker does not predict the future; he seeks the basis for future business policy and strategy in today's unexpected new developments. This edition is volume 26 of the Peter F. Drucker Complete Works from China Machine Press, translated by Lü Jia.