"Case" is about to be published, and I need to write something in front.For example, why did we create Case?What kind of reader is it?What is its academic spirit?When these question marks came flooding in, I suddenly thought of Drucker. The 96-year-old Peter Drucker is recognized as the originator of contemporary management. His famous work "The Concept of the Company" was published in 1946, which is the beginning of the term "management".What is less known is that this handed down work is a company case, and it is a case work that was rejected by the research subjects.

In 1946, the 37-year-old Peter Drucker completed "The Concept of the Company". It was this work that allowed him to step from an unknown company researcher to the red carpet of a management master.The skeleton of this work is a case study on General Motors, which Drucker had been hired by General Motors in the previous years to conduct a case study on its organizational structure. crystallization.In a show of great candor during this period, GM opened up all company documents to Drucker and granted him access to any company employee.And Drucker also made great efforts to create this case. He spent two years visiting every branch of General Motors and most of the factories east of the Mississippi River, conducted a lot of research and interviews, and read vast internal documents classified into different levels of confidentiality.When he published this work, the Second World War had just ended, and as one of the most important equipment suppliers to the US military during the war, General Motors was in full swing.It was also at this moment that Drucker, as a management genius, first keenly felt the beginning of the transformation of the great era.He believes that the assembly line management model represented by General Motors has fallen behind, and management must return to the level of "human management".

Thus, "The Concept of the Corporation" was published, and its content caught GM by surprise.Unlike the other cases, Drucker used the most daring writing technique, and he elaborated his latest research on corporate organization, while GM became the pro or con of these arguments. case. "Business owners should regard workers as a resource rather than a cost and, in times of peace, should devote themselves to the development of competent, responsible workers and a self-governing factory community," Drucker wrote.He also suggested for the first time that employers should provide employees with "job security" and suggested careful study of income security and retirement planning policies.In addition, Drucker also launched various criticisms of GM in the book, especially the guidance of its post-war policy and the call for large companies to "obey the public interest", all of which undoubtedly greatly hurt the arrogant GM. car management.

After the publication of "Concept of the Company", it was immediately boycotted by General Motors.For more than two decades thereafter, companies refused to comment on, or even read, the work—even though it was quickly recognized as the founding work of modern corporate management theory in the twentieth century, not even in the GM-sponsored management schools. Catalog index of the work.Alfred Sloan, then the CEO of General Motors and known as the "Great General Manager", also specially created a book "My Years at General Motors" that is twice as thick as "The Concept of the Company". , which is also an excellent work on corporate studies, was published with the motive of comprehensively refuting every point of Drucker.

Four years after the publication of "The Concept of the Company", almost all large western companies began to reorganize their corporate organizational structure according to Drucker's theoretical framework, and even universities and churches tried to draw inspiration from this book for organizational transformation .Another automobile giant, Ford Motor Company, was the first to recognize the value of Drucker. This old company, which was completely defeated by General Motors in the wartime market competition, took "The Concept of the Company" as a blueprint for saving and rebuilding the company. Under the leadership of Ford II, after more than ten years, it quickly revived and returned to the main battlefield of equal competition.

The case surrounding Drucker and General Motors was still lingering until the 1980s. In the postscript of the 1983 edition of "The Concept of the Company", Drucker still wrote sarcastically, "General Motors The executives of the automobile company cannot accept my basic views on management. They claim to be the pioneers of this discipline, so they cannot accept the concept run through in "The Concept of the Company": management is first of all a practice, although it Like medicine, many scientific research methods are used as tools." This "case storm" between a great company and a great management scientist is a thing of the past, but for all corporate researchers, what it leaves us is some other enlightenment beyond the focus of the debate: What kind of attitude should we use to study enterprises?Is there a balance between mutual respect and academic independence?What kind of mature business spirit and professional mentality should we have?

When we find the question mark, we have actually found the direction.It is precisely from these questions that today we create "Case" and try to follow the path of Drucker.