This is Drucker’s thick book on management tasks (811 pages and 6 pages of bibliography). The aim of the book is to help managers understand the tasks of the discipline of management and to perform. Drucker believes that free societies depend on the managerial performance of organizations and institutions. To the extent, managers perform their tasks, workers have opportunities for fulfillment, accomplishment, and service.
Drucker covers what managers need to know. Though primarily from an American perspective, he made efforts to understand, observe, correspond, and consult Asian, European, and Latin American organizations.
New material is the focus but the reader will find the work extends some of the content covered in Drucker’s seminal management book The Practice of Management (1954).
The book contains three sections: managerial tasks, managerial skills, and top management strategies.