The 50 Ideas that Shaped Business Today

Management

Many management theories, even if influential, become outdated – but the most innovative thinking on how to run organisations recognises the constantly changing nature of business, says Andrew Hill

Peter Drucker, who did more than most to promote the study of modern management, once pointed out that when Karl Marx’s collaborator Friedrich Engels was running a mill in the 19th century, its 300 employees had no managers as such, only “charge hands” who enforced discipline on “proletarians”.

As Drucker wrote in The New Realities (1989) management’s “fundamental task” is to “make people capable of joint performance through common goals, ...