DWD20200314

David's Time With Peter F. Drucker 2020.3.14 Increasingly, however, the economic chain brings together genuine partners that is, institutions in which there is equality of power and genuine independence, This is true of the partnership between a pharmaceutical company and the biology faculty of a major research university. This is true of the joint ventures through which American industry got into Japan after WWⅡ. This is true of the partnerships today between chemical and pharmaceutical companies and companies in genetics, molecular biology or medical electronics. These companies in the new technologies may be quite small——and very often are——and badly in need of capital. But they own independent technology. Therefore they are the senior partners when it comes to technology. They, rather than the much bigger pharmaceutical or chemical company, have a choice with whom to ally themselves. The same is largely true in information technology, and also in finance. And them neither the traditional Keiretsu nor command and control work. What is needed, therefore, is a redefinition of the scope of management. Management has to encompass the entire. For business this means by and large the economic process. But the biology department of the major research university does not see itself as an economic unit, and cannot be managed as such. In other institutions the process also as to be defined differently Where we have gone furthest in trying to build management of the entire process is American health care. The HMO(health maintenance organization) is an attempt——a first and so far a very tentative, very debatable attempt——to bring the entire process of health care delivery under partnership management. The new assumption on which management, both as a discipline and as a practive, will increasingly have to base itself is that the scope of management is not legal. It has to be operational. It has to embrace the entire process. It has to be focused on results and performance across the entire econmic chain.