Peter Drucker—professor, journalist, historian—took a wrecking ball to the Taylor-Ford model. He conceived a new management ideal, results-driven yet humanistic. A corporation, he wrote, should be a community “built on trust and respect for the workers—not just a profit machine.” Further, he urged that subordinates be consulted on company goals. Instead of traditional crisis management, he proposed a balance of long- and short-range planning, informed by data and enriched by regular conversations among colleagues.
