About
The Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University was established in 1999 to collect and preserve the work of Peter F. Drucker to make it available to scholars, students, and writers, and to make his work and philosophy effective in the practice of management.
It is now home to nearly a century of research on the Practice of Management, providing lifelong learners the opportunity to explore the work of Peter Drucker the “Father of Modern Management” and other leading thinkers, including Tom Peters and Charles Handy, to support the work of “strengthening organizations to strengthen society.”
Drucker was the first to see that the developing world was turning into a “society of organizations,” and the strength of our communities hinges on all of our institutions—private, public, and nonprofit—being effective and responsible. To him, the most significant ingredient to the success of these organizations was the presence of an effective executive, who had the skills and ability to “get the right things done”, no matter what the size of the organization.
Drucker had seen firsthand what happens when society stops functioning, having witnessed the rise of the Nazis in the aftermath of the Great War and Depression. This was the central theme of the first of the 39 major books – The End of Economic Man – that he would publish throughout his extraordinarily long and productive career. “These catastrophes broke through the everyday routine which makes men accept existing forms, institutions and tenets as unalterable laws…They suddenly exposed the vacuum behind the façade of society.”
Drucker was determined never to let things break down like that again and set out to help leaders build effective and responsible institutions, learning much from rising corporate leaders, which helped inform the writing of some of his most popular books – The Effective Executive, The Concept of the Corporation, The Practice of Management.
The Creator and Inventor of Modern Management
A label proclaimed for him by Tom Peters, who studied Peter’s work and went on to become one of the most sought-after minds on management philosophy and practice.
Even as he became best known, especially in The United States, as a writer on management, it was not his foremost concern. The majority of his books deal with community, society, and polity. He strongly believed that man in his social and political existence must have a functioning society where an individual has status in the community, function in society, and trust in their major institutions.
The work of society is carried out through the “society of organizations”: (1) Public sector organizations in which the work of federal, state, and local government is carried out. (2) Private sector organizations, established to meet the economic needs and wants of citizens (3) Social sector (sometimes referred to as nonprofit) organizations to care for those health and welfare needs of citizens that are not met fully either by public or private sector organizations. For a society to function well, its organizations should be single-purpose institutions, while working together to leverage their resources to drive positive change.
If the institutions of our pluralist society of institutions do not perform with responsible autonomy, we will not have individualism and a society in which there is a chance for people to fulfill themselves. We will instead impose on ourselves complete regimentation in which no one will be allowed autonomy. Tyranny is the only alternative to strong, performing autonomous institutions. Freedom is not so much a right as a duty. Real freedom is not freedom from something; that would be license. It is freedom to choose between doing or not doing something, to act one way or another, to hold one belief or the opposite.
Today the Institute and its mission – Strengthening Organizations to Strengthen Society – has helped it become a destination for those committed to a lifetime of learning. Its world-class executive education opportunities and leadership and management training are renowned for helping people manage with courage.
Michael H. Kelly: Executive Director
Michael H. Kelly is the executive director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University and a co-founder of the Drucker Corporate Effectiveness Lab. Established in 1999, the institute collects and preserves the works of Peter Drucker, making them accessible to leaders, managers, scholars, students, and writers. It also promotes initiatives aimed at improving management practices. Currently, the institute houses nearly a century’s worth of research on management practices, providing leaders and scholars the opportunity to learn how to “strengthen organizations to strengthen society.”
He is also a founding partner of the Sconset Group, which advises leaders in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors on solutions that promote economic growth, create quality jobs, provide housing, and develop a skilled workforce. Additionally, he writes a weekly newsletter titled Insights from LA. Mr. Kelly has held various high-level positions at the Los Angeles Coalition for the Economy & Jobs, The Boeing Company, and with California Governors Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
He is also the founding chair of the Philanthropic Foundation for California State University, Dominguez Hills, an advisory board member for WorkingNation, a co-founder of LA Goes Pink, and a former trustee of AltaSea at the Port of LA. Michael earned a degree in Economics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a Master’s in Public Administration from the University of Southern California, where he was recognized as a Dean’s Merit Scholar. He is married to Mia Kelly and is the proud father of three daughters.
Drucker Institute Board Members
Theresa Reno-Weber: Chair; CEO of GoodMaps
Nobuhiro Iijima: President and CEO of Yamazaki Baking Co.
KH Moon: President and CEO of Hansoll Textile Ltd.
Cecily Drucker: Attorney
Ben Baldwin: Founder at Upteaming, Founder City Project, ScaleDriver
Michelle Bligh: Interim President & Professor of Organizational Behavior at CGU
David Sprott: Henry Y. Hwang Dean, Drucker School of Management and Professor of Marketing at CGU
Drucker Institute’s Corporate Effectiveness Innovation Team
The research lab leads the development and production of the Drucker Institute’s Annual Rankings of America’s Best Managed Publicly Traded Companies and works to:
- Introduce innovative methods (AI, Machine Learning, etc.) to enhance the Institute’s current assessment of corporate performance, offering executives and investors a more comprehensive, long-term perspective on how their companies are being managed.
- Explore new data sources to enhance understanding of how various dimensions of corporate performance connect and create models to test the alignment between those sources.
- Develop internal indices through experimentation with various weighting schemes, strategies for integrating historical price data, and rebalancing schedules, or alternatively, outline the process for potential outsourcing.
- Introduce and assess a new dataset that addresses many of the existing limitations on how intangible assets, especially relational assets, and key determinants of firm performance can offer a deeper understanding of the intricate relationship between relationship-based assets, innovation, and financial performance.
- Offer insightful information and the knowledge required to enhance the existing Drucker Index and develop new indices that appeal to capital investors who recognize the opportunity to invest in organizations closely aligned with Drucker’s core principles of “doing the right things well.”
- Offer consultancy services to collaborate with companies looking to learn more about their market performance in comparison with high performers, their peers and trends throughout time.
The Team
Faculty Advisors and Senior Drucker Institute Fellows
David Sprott: Henry Y. Hwang Dean, Drucker School of Management and Professor of Marketing at CGU
Bernie Jaworski: Peter F. Drucker Chair in Management and the Liberal Arts
Stewart I. Donaldson: Distinguished University Professor & Executive Director, Claremont Evaluation Center & Executive Director, The Evaluators’ Institute (TEI)
Katharina Pick: Full Clinical Professor Organizational Behavior
Chief Data Scientist & Drucker Institute Fellow & Co-Founder of Corporate Effectiveness Lab
Daniel Martin
daniel.j.martin@cgu.edu
Drucker Institute Fellow of Innovation and PhD candidate at CGU for International Political Economy and Computational Analytics
Chasen Jeffries
The Drucker Archives
Cecilia Contreras
Cecilia serves as the Archivist for the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University. Her work consists of arranging, describing, preserving, and providing access to the various collections within the Drucker Institute archives, which include but are not limited to the Peter F. Drucker Papers, Tom J. Peters Papers, and the Drucker Institute Collection. She is committed to assisting students, researchers, and the like with all their research-related needs. Cecilia holds a Master’s in Library and Information Science with specializations in archival and library studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a B.A. in History from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.