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PETER F. DRUCKER AUTOBIGRAPHIC

Peter F. Drucker was a renowned management consultant, educator, and author. He was an
Austrian-American, born in Vienna, Austria, on November 19, 1909, and died in Claremont,
California, on November 11, 2005. Peter F. Drucker was the only child of Adolf and Caroline
Drucker. Adolf, who was Jewish, ran a successful wholesale wine business. Caroline, a
Christian, was the daughter of a leading Viennese family of bankers. Drucker’s parents divorced
when he was six years old, and he lived with his mother and attended a Christian elementary
school, the Akademisches Gymnasium, followed by the Vienna Institute of Economics.
Drucker was the author of 39 books, including The Effective Executive (1966), The Practice of
Management (1954), and Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973). His books have
been translated into more than 30 languages.
Among Drucker's early inspirations was the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, a friend of
his father's, who instilled in him the significance of invention and entrepreneurship. Drucker was
also influenced by John Maynard Keynes, whom he heard talk at Cambridge in 1934. "I quickly
recognised that Keynes and all the smart economic students in the room were interested in the
behavior of commodities," Drucker wrote, "while I was interested in the behavior of people."
Drucker's publications throughout the following 70 years would be distinguished by an emphasis
on human interactions rather than data crunching.
Drucker's books and articles, both scientific and popular, investigated how humans are organized
in the business, government, and nonprofit sectors of society. Many of the major developments
of the late twentieth century were predicted in his writings, including privatization and
decentralization; Japan's rise to economic world power; the decisive importance of marketing;
and the emergence of the information society, with its requirement of lifelong learning. Drucker
invented the phrase "knowledge worker" in 1959, and later in his life viewed knowledge-worker
productivity to be the next frontier of management.
He is known for his influential philosophy on management and leadership. Drucker’s ideas
helped create many of the management practices used in modern businesses. The impact he had
is evident in the fact that he is still studied at business schools across the world