Drucker begins the lecture describing how tasks should be allotted to employees and how new assignments create situations in which workers must be selected according to their skills and experiences. They proceed to talk about the mission of art museums, and how businesses believe that by allocating money, organizations can avoid hard work. Drucker states that there is no substitute for hard work, and that money cannot buy hard work. He also states if an organization or business does not know what it’s doing, it should not put lots of people to work, but, instead, put one good person to work until they know what they are doing. Drucker then explains the three things one learns in business--how to sabotage, how to create disagreement, and how to confuse every issue. Drucker proceeds to discuss the history of the modern research university and how, in addition to why, it arose in Germany as the University of Berlin. He goes on to talk about the American idea of the academic community, and how the notion of community, as embodied in the American liberal arts college, is a distinctly American phenomenon. They move on to discuss Chrysler automobile company and how they are purchased because of their engineering, not because of their manufacturing, and proceed to talk about the history of the cotton crop and how it came to dominate in the world system. The class then moves on to consider tobacco alongside the proliferation of cotton, and reflect on how steel was an in-between product and represented a turning point. The lecture continues on the topic to the history of steel-making and the introduction of fertilizer, then considers the application of engineering systems and technology and how it represented a new process applied to a new product. With the pharmaceutical industry, in particular, there is a symbiotic relationship between research, development, and testing. Drucker then notes that, in most instances, car service has become a revenue center in the automobile industry, with the service manager becoming a part of top management and consumers becoming more focused on service. Everything else in the industry is data processing and manufacturing.
Drucker, Peter F. (Peter Ferdinand), 1909-2005 Claremont Graduate University Claremont Graduate School Claremont Graduate University-Faculty Claremont University Center Employee selection Management - Employee participation Art museums Sabotage Confusion Universities and colleges Germany Chrysler automobile Cotton Cotton industry Tobacco Steel Steel industry and trade Fertilizer industry Pharmaceutical industry Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Technological innovations Technology Disagreements University of Berlin Academia Community Automobile repair services
Source
Original recording, 1978; Drucker Archives; Box 68
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