Rating: 
Summary: Not The Best of Drucker but better than most business books
Review: Despite being a huge Drucker Fan I give this book a four star rating. In saying this, the book was interesting and a good learning process but it didn't cause me to experience a paradigm shift. The Global Economy and the Nation State (ch. 14) saved my rating of the book because it was so insightful. I found much of the book to be filler because a lot of the content can be found in other Drucker books and can be found from chapter to chapter in this book. To put it into perspective, at least four chapters are nothing more than edited interviews with the author that were published in magazines and I kept finding facts / quotes repeated again and again. Managing in the Next Society by Peter Drucker is the latest book by the author. The book is a collection of articles and interviews by Drucker in recent years. More specifically, chapters in this book have originally appeared in The Economist, Red Herring, Business 2.0., Inc. Magazine, New Perspectives, Foreign Affairs magazine, Viewpoint, Leaders to Leader, Atlantic Monthly, The Wall Street Journal and in the Harvard Business Review. So, while I wouldn't be surprised if Drucker fans have read one or two of these chapters via magazines I would be surprised if any reader has read most of the content before publication of this book. The book is segmented into four different sections. They are: The Information Society, Business Opportunities, The Changing World Economy and The Next Society. Each section has approximately 60 - 80 pages of text and the book is easy to read, as most Drucker books are. If you haven't read anything by the author before don't start here. I would personally recommend new readers of Peter Drucker start with The Essential Drucker as it stands as the authors best work (it is a collection of his best works from over 60 years of writing.) Other Excellent works by the author are Post Capitalist Society, The Age of Discontinuity, The Effective Executive & Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Most of my reviews are in business / economics and I encourage people to read them, whether here on Amazon or at my personal website. If you are interested in economic history book I would encourage everyone to read The Worldly Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner since it is more international in scope and deals with the lives and times of the most famous economists in history. If you are interested in economic development I would encourage you to read Hernando DeSoto's Mystery of Capital but note his lack of focus on corruption in certain countries.
Rating: 
Summary: DRUCKER DRAWS FROM A VAST EXPERIENTIAL & KNOWLEDGE RESERVOIR
Review: Dr. F. R. Bosch an apologist, researcher, and lecturer who integrates [Biblical] faith and knowledge, is a full-time university professor in Southern California, U.S.A. "Managing in the Next Society" should be a challenging and thought-provoking book for both novices and management pros alike. It is an essential read for anyone who wants to take a hold of and manage their lives (personal as well as corporate). It is not a quick fix, how to, fad type book. The format resembles sitting in a comfortable place and having a conversation with one who draws from a vast experiential and knowledge reservoir. The book invites the reader to take a peak outside their world. It calls one to look around the corner, where the yesterdays and today may be leading. Prof. Drucker marshals from his rich experience and knowledge the critical factors that will affect and bring about radical changes to the way we manage our individual and corporate lives in the future.
He successfully accomplishes this by using brief historical cyclical analogies to show how their fundamental causes have brought about similar results at different times. Although Prof. Drucker speaks of "change agent," "organized abandonment," and "organized and continuous improvement," these are not to be understood as radical paradigm shifts where the fundamentals are lost. Instead, they are best understood in the context of two earlier books, which help to understand and further appreciate what he is saying. Namely, that the "Fundamentals do not change. But the specifics to manage them do change greatly with changes in internal and external conditions," and that "there is a need for continuity in respect to the fundamentals...because change is a constant...the foundations have to be extra strong" (Managing in Turbulent Times, p. 9; Management Challenges for the 21st Century, p. 92).
Chapters three and four are especially beneficial as we undergo the Information Revolution. They describe the need to differentiate between "data" and "information." This seems pertinent since we often lump together and take their meanings for granted. The chapters suggest how to use information effectively and efficiently with their far-reaching implications. The book addresses the new economy, offers accurate accounting practices that facilitate effective management and decision making. It also portrays the new working environment of the future. Drucker extensively goes into the knowledge environment, staffing, continuing education, and the notion of second careers for the over fifty, as well as addressing other aspects of the next society.
Rating:
Summary: Some things start out fine, but then what?
Review: History still matters. It's best lesson is that we really don't know what is going to happen next. My own attempts to contemplate the kind of secret circus stunts that I have observed have always been extralimital to the presses' goals, but Peter F. Drucker's autobiography, ADVENTURES OF A BYSTANDER, one of the best books I've read, shows how thoroughly someone can describe a fantastic range of people, those who would normally protect their privacy so well that hardly anyone would expect to meet them, even in print. In MANAGING IN THE NEXT SOCIETY, my big surprise was discovering that a modern literary hero, "Franz Kafka also invented the safety helmet. He was the great man in factory inspection and workmen's compensation." (p. 33). Trying to find a place in society, when I know so much by and about Kafka that mental evaluators (I have taken some of their tests) are likely to consider me confused, and my history suggests that I am likely to be grandiose if I try to think at all, this book might not help my future, if the future society is one in which health care has become a top priority, "because health care and education together will be 40 percent of the gross national product within twenty years. Already, they're at least a third." (p. 29). Drucker shows that he is still involved in checking business for some sign of a heartbeat. Thinking that there might be a society some day, but we aren't there yet, sums up the way a lot of people exist. I continue to be shocked by the inability of people to fathom politics. As someone concerned with financing and management, Drucker is free to report awful experiences whenever a union is involved. Sometimes a union represents the power of people to demand money: "In the early 1950s, President Truman sent me to Brazil to persuade the government there that with the new technology, we could wipe out illiteracy in five years at no cost. The Brazilian teachers' union sabotaged it." (p. 31). In the U.S., unions had so much political power that it is possible for Drucker to report, "Let me say that if we had listened to Mr. Eisenhower, who wanted catastrophic health care for everybody, we would have no health care problems. What shut him down, as you may not have heard, was the UAW. In the 1950s, the only benefit the unions could still promise was company-paid health care. . . . So the UAW killed it with help from the American Medical Association. Still, the AMA wasn't that powerful. The UAW was." (p. 35). If the doctors were willing to take whatever they could get from existing plans instead of trying to figure out how to get any money from the government, you ought to be able to figure out how powerful the government was when Eisenhower (who only wanted to cover "everybody who spent more than 10 percent of their taxable income for health expenditures" p. 35) was president, a real general, compared to the administration of the fly-by fighter pilot who makes the big promises now. Financially, it seems odd to me that this book is proposing "a service waiting to be born: insurance against the risks of foreign-exchange exposure." (p. 20). Anyone who thought that derivatives might accomplish this ought to keep reading until they get a full history of financial services. "But these financial instruments are not designed to provide a service to customers. They are designed to make the trader's speculations more profitable and at the same time less risky--surely a violation of the basic laws of risk and unlikely to work. . . . as a good many traders have already found out." (p. 140). The historical fluctuation is the least part of the beast in the aggregate of currency markets, but Drucker pictures the situation in miniature: "mostly among the world's huge number of middle-size businesses that suddenly find themselves exposed to a chaotic global economy. No business, except an exceptional very big one, can protect itself against this risk by itself. Only aggregation, which subjects the risks to probability, could do so. . . . Making catastrophic currency risk insurable might similarly make obsolete most of the foreign-exchange business of existing institutions, let alone their frantic currency trading and speculation in derivatives." (p. 146). That was written in 1999. A general decline has probably not calmed the waters much since then, but the question of whose money would be capable of keeping the business world afloat might still be rising. There was a time when money itself might be worth something, back in 1724, when Jonathan Swift had to pretend to be M. B. Drapier to complain that coins of brass were not the same as gold and silver. It has been a long time since anyone could live "in a country where the people of all ranks, parties and denominations are convinced to a man, that the utter undoing of themselves and their posterity forever, will be dated from the admission of that execrable coin; that if it once enters, it can no more be confined to a small or moderate quantity, than the plague can be confined to a few families, and that no equivalent can be given by any earthly power, any more than a dead carcass can be recovered to life by a cordial." (October 13, 1724). Drucker is politically moderate enough to believe "it is socially and morally unforgivable when managers reap huge profits for themselves but fire workers. As societies, we will pay a heavy price for the contempt this generates among middle managers and workers." (p. 150). Drucker still thinks of society as including some workers, but this seems less likely the older I get, and he is way up there, if age means anything.
Rating:
Summary: Some things start out fine, but then what?
Review: History still matters. It's best lesson is that we really don't know what is going to happen next. My own attempts to contemplate the kind of secret circus stunts that I have observed have always been extralimital to the presses' goals, but Peter F. Drucker's autobiography, ADVENTURES OF A BYSTANDER, one of the best books I've read, shows how thoroughly someone can describe a fantastic range of people, those who would normally protect their privacy so well that hardly anyone would expect to meet them, even in print. In MANAGING IN THE NEXT SOCIETY, my big surprise was discovering that a modern literary hero, "Franz Kafka also invented the safety helmet. He was the great man in factory inspection and workmen's compensation." (p. 33). Trying to find a place in society, when I know so much by and about Kafka that mental evaluators (I have taken some of their tests) are likely to consider me confused, and my history suggests that I am likely to be grandiose if I try to think at all, this book might not help my future, if the future society is one in which health care has become a top priority, "because health care and education together will be 40 percent of the gross national product within twenty years. Already, they're at least a third." (p. 29). Drucker shows that he is still involved in checking business for some sign of a heartbeat. Thinking that there might be a society some day, but we aren't there yet, sums up the way a lot of people exist. I continue to be shocked by the inability of people to fathom politics. As someone concerned with financing and management, Drucker is free to report awful experiences whenever a union is involved. Sometimes a union represents the power of people to demand money: "In the early 1950s, President Truman sent me to Brazil to persuade the government there that with the new technology, we could wipe out illiteracy in five years at no cost. The Brazilian teachers' union sabotaged it." (p. 31). In the U.S., unions had so much political power that it is possible for Drucker to report, "Let me say that if we had listened to Mr. Eisenhower, who wanted catastrophic health care for everybody, we would have no health care problems. What shut him down, as you may not have heard, was the UAW. In the 1950s, the only benefit the unions could still promise was company-paid health care. . . . So the UAW killed it with help from the American Medical Association. Still, the AMA wasn't that powerful. The UAW was." (p. 35). If the doctors were willing to take whatever they could get from existing plans instead of trying to figure out how to get any money from the government, you ought to be able to figure out how powerful the government was when Eisenhower (who only wanted to cover "everybody who spent more than 10 percent of their taxable income for health expenditures" p. 35) was president, a real general, compared to the administration of the fly-by fighter pilot who makes the big promises now. Financially, it seems odd to me that this book is proposing "a service waiting to be born: insurance against the risks of foreign-exchange exposure." (p. 20). Anyone who thought that derivatives might accomplish this ought to keep reading until they get a full history of financial services. "But these financial instruments are not designed to provide a service to customers. They are designed to make the trader's speculations more profitable and at the same time less risky--surely a violation of the basic laws of risk and unlikely to work. . . . as a good many traders have already found out." (p. 140). The historical fluctuation is the least part of the beast in the aggregate of currency markets, but Drucker pictures the situation in miniature: "mostly among the world's huge number of middle-size businesses that suddenly find themselves exposed to a chaotic global economy. No business, except an exceptional very big one, can protect itself against this risk by itself. Only aggregation, which subjects the risks to probability, could do so. . . . Making catastrophic currency risk insurable might similarly make obsolete most of the foreign-exchange business of existing institutions, let alone their frantic currency trading and speculation in derivatives." (p. 146). That was written in 1999. A general decline has probably not calmed the waters much since then, but the question of whose money would be capable of keeping the business world afloat might still be rising. There was a time when money itself might be worth something, back in 1724, when Jonathan Swift had to pretend to be M. B. Drapier to complain that coins of brass were not the same as gold and silver. It has been a long time since anyone could live "in a country where the people of all ranks, parties and denominations are convinced to a man, that the utter undoing of themselves and their posterity forever, will be dated from the admission of that execrable coin; that if it once enters, it can no more be confined to a small or moderate quantity, than the plague can be confined to a few families, and that no equivalent can be given by any earthly power, any more than a dead carcass can be recovered to life by a cordial." (October 13, 1724). Drucker is politically moderate enough to believe "it is socially and morally unforgivable when managers reap huge profits for themselves but fire workers. As societies, we will pay a heavy price for the contempt this generates among middle managers and workers." (p. 150). Drucker still thinks of society as including some workers, but this seems less likely the older I get, and he is way up there, if age means anything.
Rating: 
Summary: Nothing new!
Review: I understand everyone respects Drucker. But this book is full of historical events. Most of the ideas were repeated in every management book. I do not find anything new. The next society provides little information about the global society. Overall, I would not recommend this book to my students.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing new!
Review: I understand everyone respects Drucker. But this book is full of historical events. Most of the ideas were repeated in every management book. I do not find anything new. The next society provides little information about the global society. Overall, I would not recommend this book to my students.
Rating:
Summary: Prepare Yourself for the Challenging Changes
Review: It is a sobering thought. In his latest book, Peter F. Drucker, writer, lecturer, business philosopher, argues convincingly argues the greatest technological changes of the Information Revolution lie ahead and most of them will have little to do with information. To illustrate, Drucker retreats to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. James Watt improved the steam engine in 1776; it was not until 1785 when the engine was harnessed to an industrial operation - the spinning of cloth, that society appreciated its benefits. During the following half century, Drucker notes, output increased and the price of cotton textiles fell 90 per cent. In short order the great majority of manufacturing processes were mechanized. Yet it was not until the 1820s with the adaptation of the steam engine to land based transportation - the railroad - that society witnessed its first new product. It was without precedent and it transformed the economy, society and politics of its day. The Information Revolution is standing today at the same doorstep where the Industrial Revolution in 1820, Drucker believes. Some of the chapters of the book, which are essays or articles that have been previously published, deal with management topics; some do not. Although none offers a cure-all, it remains a management book. The societal and social changes will dominate the executive's thinking for the next 10 to 15 years. His or her response, Drucker says, may be more important for the success or failure of their organizations than their response to any economic event.
Rating:
Summary: Drucker strikes gold again!
Review: Mr. Drucker has done it again. This books dispels all those olde management rules and tells you how to manage for sucess. Drucker continues to guide us to higer heights with this book. Truly amazing.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent foresight
Review: Mr. Drucker is probably the most experienced Management Consultant, teacher and Guru who has traveled through business transformations of the twentieth century. In his characteristic style of narration, with exceptional command over facts and the English language, he is once again at his best in this book - a collection of his recent articles on the new economy and the future of Society. Starting from the invention of the steam engine ( James Watt - 1776), the steam boat ( 1807) to the first railroad ( 1829), the first article "Beyond the information Revolution" describes similarities between the Industrial revolution and the Information Revolution. Moore's law is applicable to the computer's processing power today. A similar phenomenon happened to the cost and productivity of textiles in the Industrial age. Since then, the global economies have transformed completely and today we have a knowledge-based society. The decline of Agriculture during the Industrial age is similar to the decline of Manufacturing in the last four decades. What lies ahead, in terms of demographic, social, economic and business scenarios, during the next three decades makes fascinating reading. If you are in a hurry to find out what is in store, you may visit the last chapter directly. But the journey is more exciting than the destination. Please take the railroad powered by the steam engine and enjoy the lovely trip.
Rating:
Summary: Managing in the Next Century by Peter Drucker
Review: Peter Drucker integrates modern information technology with the
business and organizational dynamics of the present and future.
For instance, he explains how E-Commerce is to information
services as the rails were to the Industrial Revolution.
For sure, we are in the throes of a modern information revolution
according to Drucker. People can purchase autos by E-mail
through CarDirect and commerce is growing exponentially on
E-bay. According to Drucker, the new economy is not here yet; however, it is approaching like a speeding train. The author
cautions us not to reject the unexpected success because it
may not be an outgrowth of your earlier planning. Drucker
encourages companies to develop and reward the entrepreneurial
spirit. He indicates the importance of preserving autonomy
in institutions. In addition, he cites strategies for dealing
with fragmentation in organizations. The present and future
work force will consist of knowledge workers having vastly different perspectives than employees of the past. This book
is perfect for anyone daring to peer into the future of
organizational dynamics.
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