Drucker Concept of Management as A Liberal Art Discussion

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Answer the main topic question (200 words) and reply two discussions (100-150 words)


This discussion will focus on Drucker's concept of "Management as a Liberal Art" (MLA). To engage, you must first review the following readings, which are listed in the week's reading assignments and repeated here for your convenience:

**Chapter 3, Contribution of Management as a Liberal Art, Drucker’s Lost Art of Management

The material from this chapter will be covered in the Week 6 Lecture.

**Alan Kantrow, "Why Read Peter Drucker?” Harvard Business Review, Vol. 58, January-February, 1980, pp. 74-82. https://hbr.org/2009/11/why-read-peter-drucker

You can gain access to the last article by pasting the link into your browsers.

Now for this week's topic:

What aspects of MLA described in Chapter 3, in the “Introduction” to Drucker’s Lost Art of Management, does Kantrow ascribe to Peter Drucker? What internal inconsistencies (if any) do you find in Kantrow’s article itself?

#1

According to Maciariello and Linkletter (2011), they had a strong belief that it cannot be all about money and profit with respect to Drucker's ideas. This does not entail that Drucker considered profit unimportant. Instead, he viewed profit as an approach that the society used to reward management for the good use of their resources and for the satisfaction of customer demand with a fair price. This holds true especially for long-term profit, which motivates the management to keep up with its high performance.

Overall, it appears that Kantrow's arguments in which Drucker considered profit as worse than irrelevant quote it out of context. Kanstrow said that a company can make a social contribution only if it is highly profitable according to Drucker, which was not true. This suggested that Kanstrow was excessively interpreting Drucker's position in a way that served Kanstrow's argument. He stated that much of Drucker's thought reflects a terrible urgency of moral purpose. How would the management be sustainable and successful without adequate business ethics? Kanstrow acknowledged the needs for ethics in terms of profitability, but he criticized Drucker for the same reason. Without sufficient proof that Drucker's ideas are practically dispassionate and wrong, it is difficult to understand the arguments made by Kanstrow sound or reasonable.


#2

In Western history, liberal arts education is a program of higher education offering subjects that are considered essential for people to take part in the governance of society and its organizations. Compared with majors related to specific professional or technical curriculum, such as law, computer science, and graphic design, liberal arts education provides general education of subjects such as literature, philosophy, and mathematics.

The main purpose of a liberal arts education is to teach us to be able to view our world and the problems in it from different perspectives. It’s becoming more and more important to have this ability, because jobs that require technical or specialized knowledge are being replaced by automation and artificial intelligence, and more work is left to management tasks like strategic planning and decision making. Thus, “our mentality has to move from understanding accounting, finance, and mechanical devices to understanding our fellow human beings, and beyond that, to understanding how our society works.”

To be effective at management, it’s essential to look at problems from diverse ways and come up with different solutions. Therefore, knowledge from liberal arts education will be contributing to management skills. Kantrow believes that people can get more inspired by Drucker’s way of thinking than by his management theory. He ascribes the following aspects of “Management as a Liberal Art”(MLA) to Perter Drucker’s way of thinking. First, Drucker’s ability of integrative thinking allows him to identify the key assumptions at issue, to establish their mutual relations, and to evaluate them. Second, Drucker can view a problem in its external historical (or cultural) context and its internal logic. Lastly, Drucker’ holism helps him extrapolate a few ideal patterns from a great number of isolated facts and principles of business organizations. I just find this integrative thinking conflict with the holism. Drucker’s integrative thinking aligns with MLA’s goal of “view the world from various ways”, but his holism is about finding the only common part among individual facts.

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DRU 502: Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lesson 6 Management as a Liberal Art Objectives of this Presentation • Introduction to concept of “management as a liberal art” (MLA) • Applications of MLA to Innovation and Entrepreneurship Management as a Liberal Art (MLA) What do we mean by “liberal arts education”? • In the “West,” it used to mean making people ready to participate in the governance of society and its organizations What subjects would make up a liberal arts education? • Literature • Philosophy • Mathematics • Social and physical sciences • The arts (music, etc.) Management as a Liberal Art (MLA) You might respond, “This is all good, but what does the study of liberal arts teach you to do?” Consider this: we learn to “do” things in professional/technical education courses, such as • Law • Medicine • Engineering • Business and public administration Management as a Liberal Art (MLA) • The purpose of a liberal arts education is to teach us: (1) that there are almost always several ways of viewing the world and the problems in it (2) that usually, more than one of these alternatives is “right,” in its own terms (Note the connection to “diverse perspectives”—it is a key to Paper #2) (3) to empathize with points of view that differ from our own (4) to be able to identify issues and discuss them rationally (5) to be able to distinguish sound arguments from poor arguments (6) to communicate effectively (7) that in human affairs, there are often no “final” solutions Management as a Liberal Art (MLA) A “bad example” of “managing by the numbers”: The Backyard Playground Company (covered in Lesson 6 Lecture) Management as a Liberal Art (MLA) In Drucker’s early works (through 1950 or so) his concern was not just with how best to manage a business, but about the responsibility of “management” to create a good, or at least a “tolerable” society for everyone... • Not just the shareholders • Not just the managers • ...But everyone, including those who did the work What was the owner of the Backyard Playground Company thinking about? To what effects? What kind of world would we have if every entrepreneur thought like him? Management as a Liberal Art (MLA) • This is just a “small” example of what goes on, too often, in American business • The “people” side is downplayed in favor of “the numbers” • This disgusted Drucker • He passed on his concerns to some of his students at Clairmont, during his last years as a professor • One of those students is Joseph Marciariello, who has written extensively about Drucker’s writings • In the next few slides we will review his position on MLA… Management as a Liberal Art There has been a decline in interest in the liberal arts over the past half century • • In the 1960s, students wanted educations that would help them “develop a meaningful philosophy of life” In 2001, they wanted educations that would make them “well-off financially” (Maciariello 2011 96) As society moves towards increasing automation, more work is left to “human” activity (and thought) Thus, our mentality has to move from understanding accounting, finance, and mechanical devices to understanding our fellow human beings, and beyond that, to understanding how our society works. Management as a Liberal Art To be effective, managers need to understand how the “human” machine works. You won’t learn much about this in business classes. Managers need to be good at grasping, understanding and relating to diverse ways of looking at things, varied ways of conceptualizing and solving problems, and alternative, but equally valid views of “right and wrong.” We find these matters addressed in philosophy, literature, history, and the social sciences—the “liberal arts.” On the next slide we will review some quotes from Marciariello’s book... Management as a Liberal Art • “Management as a liberal art does not seek to eliminate interpersonal conflict; instead, it recognizes that conflict is an inherent part of the human condition.” (Maciariello 2011 132) • By practicing management as a liberal art, “…[W]e are trying to raise the level of vision and intellectual attainment, as well as the moral capacity of all members of an organization, especially those who occupy or aspire to positions of responsibility.” (Maciariello 2011 132) • MLA is not a magic pill…it has the potential to refocus people in power positions on values, ethics, and the question of character. • For Drucker, it cannot be “all about money and profit.”* Management as a Liberal Art And that is the essence of Drucker’s view of management as a liberal art. Application to Entrepreneurship and Innovation Whether they are aware of it or not, management communicates its “support” (or non-support) of diverse perspectives in its routine actions • What actions are rewarded? (Recall the “Box 2” outcome of Lesson 3) • What actions are punished (or not rewarded)? (Recall the “Box 3 Scenario” of Lesson 3) Drucker believed that MLA made the difference between a healthy, thriving organization and an organization on its way to its “death.” Entrepreneurial Leadership • These comments suggest that an executive’s approach to the work of leadership matters. The question is, is there a single “best way” to lead an innovation process? • You will see when you view the video “Secrets of Apple’s Core” that Steve Jobs’ approach to leadership and organization runs counter to contemporary leadership “wisdom.” • You also have two exercises that will address the work of leadership (Oral Presentation #2 and Paper #2). • Here are some questions to be thinking about as you read (or view) the materials in Lesson 6… Entrepreneurial Leadership • What can happen when an entrepreneur stops listening to his team? • • customers? How is “ego” involved? How might this apply to your projects, if you see yourselves as entrepreneurs? • To your relationship with the client? • To your relationships with each other? His End of Lesson 6 References Beatty, Jack. 1998. The world according to Peter Drucker. New York: The Free Press Drucker, Peter F. (1950). The New Society. New York: Harper and Brothers Maciariello, Joseph A., and Karen E. Linkletter (2011). Drucker’s Lost Art of Management. New York: McGraw-Hill
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Responses
1. I agree, according to Dunker it is not “all about money and profit.” This implies that for
Drucker, long-run profits are part of rewards the firm gets for proper utilization of its assets as
well as good customer service at considerable prices. There are internal inconsistencies in
Kantrow’s article where according to Drucker, a company is only able to make contributions in
society only in the case when it realizes large profits and this is untrue. Kanstrow criticizes
Drucker's idea of the importance of ethics in matters of profit-making, he, however,
acknowledges that there is a need for the same.
2. Liberal a...


Anonymous
This is great! Exactly what I wanted.

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