Peter F. Drucker's Concept of the Corporation

CONCEPT OF THE CORPORATION by Peter F. Drucker

In his book Concept of the Corporation published in 1946 as a case study of General Motors Corporation, Peter Drucker explores the relationship between the big business corporation and a free industrial society.

Drucker’s book was an innovation

at the time in that it was neither an economic nor a financial approach towards business; rather, it looks at the political, social and economic philosophies behind the organization structure itself.

In particular, in explores management style

and its effect on worker productivity, motivation, and general organization.

He also looks at the relationship between

organizational structure and what would later come to be known as “corporate culture” and the social values and judgments of the larger society within which the corporation must function. Drucker based his arguments on two central assumptions:

1)

That the American political and economic structure would strive towards a workable free enterprise system during times of peace; and 2) that the emergence of big business as a social reality during the fifty years prior to World War II was the “most important event in the recent social history of the Western world.”1