Peter F. Drucker's vision in public management 2000

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Abstract
Despite Peter F. Drucker's reputation as one of the nation's foremost social philosophers, public administration scholars have yet to explore the possible implications of his thought for the future of public management in the year 2000. This article seeks to fill this gap. The central theme of this essay is that Drucker's vision of public management's future can be uncovered from shards of his voluminous writings, extrapolated to the public sector, and encapsulated in six interlocking propositions: (1) Management began in the corporate sphere but is a benefaction to all societies, including Third World countries, which develop large organizations. (2) Management, despite its origin, is generic in its scope, adaptable to all organizations subject to some cultural limits, and thus transferable to the public domain whose use of it enhances prosperity and peace at home and abroad. (3) Managers in all sectors constitute elites, classes of experts best qualified to run bureaucracies of all kinds and likely to become even more important in a developing world economy. (4) Management is a body of knowledge not intrinsic to people but capable of being learned through education and training whose importance will also grow with the rise of a global economic system. (5) Ethics are a part of such instruction but, in the future, should be taught from a universal rather than particularistic viewpoint. (6) Public managers have a social mission to fulfill in whatever manner they can--helping to improve the general welfare--through a recasting of the federal government's role in domestic and transnational matters. His outlook is likely to find broad support in the field of public administration--but with differences in degree. Drucker's vision is significant because over the last decade the nation and much of the world have been moving closer to its realization and because the prospect for the year 2000 is for a continuation of this trend. Moreover, he has lived to observe such change brought about partly through the global spread of management.

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