Peter Drucker was influential mid-20th century and I still hear MBAs talk about his work. He wrote in the 1950s-1970s about the importance of the customer, the

Peter Drucker was influential mid-20th century and I still hear MBAs talk about his work. He wrote in the 1950s-1970s about the importance of the customer, the value of decentralisation rather than command and control, managers as influencers of company culture, etc. Standard management guru stuff now, but novel at the time. Of course it’s difficult to know how much management change was due to him. E.g. I’ve seen claims that he influenced the re-building of Japanese industry after World War 2, but I don’t know if it’s true. The British Library has interesting pages about Drucker and other people they describe as “management thinkers”: https://www.bl.uk/business-and-management/management-thinkers https://www.bl.uk/business-and-management/management-thinker...