Friday Peter F. Drucker, often credited with founding the field of management science, died at his home.

It was perhaps ironic that Drucker died on Armistice (Veterans) Day, as he once attributed the quick start in his career to being placed early in positions that should have been given to men in the middle of their careers, except Europe in the 1930s didn’t have such men. They had most all died in the War. Gifted with the ability to see and clarify trends years ahead of others, Drucker left Hitler’s Germany in 1933 and London, for the U.S., in 1937.

Drucker was one of a handful of prescient Austrians of the 20th century, able to see past the blur of rapid technological change and political upheaval to discern more fundamental social issues and the need for moral action. Unlike Ludwig von Mises‘ analysis of macroeconomics or F.A. Hayek’s work in sociology, Drucker ostensibly focussed on management of profit and non-profit organizations (including government), and managing oneself. Nevertheless, his insights into social trends were some of his most valuable contributions.

Drucker’s own preference was for French economist J.B. Say, who supposedly coined the term “entrepreneur” around 1800. Innovation and “knowledge work”, a term Drucker himself originated, were always important topics in his writings, including his valuable Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Drucker frequently emphasized the need for receptivity to the unexpected market and for disciplined abandonment of yesterday’s successes. In this he seemed to parallel the thought of yet another Austrian, famed economist of innovation Joseph Schumpeter, with his similar concept of “creative destruction” as the driver of growth in an economy.

Regarding Drucker’s impact on my own life, I first discovered his works as a sophomore engineering student, while volunteering with an organization known as the World Space Foundation. WSF was trying a new, non-profit approach to space exploration, and garnered some attention for its work on developing a solar sail spacecraft, though its greatest contribution was likely in the area of Earth-crossing asteroid research.

At this time NASA was really in a funk concerning lunar exploration, which had completely dried up (and would remain so for another dozen years, until the military’s Clementine spacecraft and, after a long history of determined development, Lunar Prospector). I was intrigued with the possibility that maybe we could do a lot with even modest funds in a non-profit context.

Having already concluded some time previously that innovative organizational forms might play an enabling role in space development, over the next couple of years I developed an appreciation for management science and for Drucker’s works in particular. Drucker’s thought-provoking books have always proved fascinating, even if not so easy to apply directly, and were an engrossing introduction to the study of management.

Eventually I concluded that a non-profit organization would have a difficult time maintaining enough control to pursue a long-term research program, but that for-profit enterprises might do this effectively, though much discovery and innovation in the areas of organizational and individual function was still needed. This area of research, in fact, has been my primary focus for the past 18 years.

Perhaps Drucker’s best-loved book is The Effective Executive, originally published in 1966. Drucker described it as a real-world treatment of the subject, and argued that effectiveness was a set of practices that must be learned - and practiced - starting with the executive’s managing of his time, not the work itself. Newt Gingrich, after capturing the House of Representatives for the Republican Party and becoming Speaker, credited the book with guiding his success, which led to a new surge in its popularity.

One of Drucker’s strengths was his ability to see that management, as a discipline, transcended particular organizational forms. He was equally interested in improving effectiveness in both the profit and non-profit sectors, and his latest brief but valuable work, published this year, was Managing Oneself.

It is in the profit realm, however, that Drucker’s comments are sometimes most difficult to unravel. His discussion (Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, Ch. 6) of the role of business, and of profit in particular, is thought-provoking yet seemingly incomplete. Similarly, some of the concepts brought out early in Managing for Results beg to be pursued at a conceptual level rather than with the detailed analysis of product contributions that follows.

As with any great researcher, Drucker was as adept at asking the right questions as answering them. I continue to find his works profitable reading, however that may be defined!