Management Schools and Theorists: A Look at W. E. Deming and Peter Drucker Abstract W. E. Deming and Peter F. Drucker are two well-known theorists in the field of management who have their own beliefs on how businesses (organizations) should and could be managed in order to maximize productivity to its fullest potential. Summarized biographies and overviews of each theorists’ beliefs and association with a particular school of management is explained. Sources and references include published literature, articles, and Internet websites. A final look at how each theorist’s view has similarities, yet differ, is detailed in the conclusion.
Management Schools and Theorists: A Look at W. E. Deming and Peter Drucker There are several well-known schools/theories of management thought and many famous theorists associated with them. W. Edwards Deming and Peter F. Drucker are two well-known theorists in the field of management who have their own beliefs on how businesses (organizations) should and could be managed in order to maximize productivity to its fullest potential. Deming is known for his work in Total Quality Management (TQM), while Drucker is commonly associated with the Contemporary School, specifically Knowledge Management.
Though each school of theory has its own practices, there are common links between the two. William Edwards Deming was born in Sioux City, Iowa on 14 October 1900 to William Albert Deming and Pluma Irene Edwards. As an adult, he used the name W. Edwards Deming. Young Ed Deming attended school in Powell (formally Camp Coulter), Wyoming and held odd jobs to help support the family. In 1917, he enrolled in the University of Wyoming at Laramie. In 1921 he graduated with a B. S. in electrical engineering. In 1925, he received an M. S. from the University of Colorado and in 1928, a Ph. D. from Yale University.
Both graduate degrees were in mathematics and mathematical physics. Dr. Deming studied music theory, played several instruments and composed two masses, several canticles and an easily sung version of the Star Spangled Banner. (Biography, n. d. ) As the Deming Institute (Biography, n. d. ) illustrates, Deming was involved in a number of international activities, some involving the application of statistical analysis toward improvement of quality control. In 1950, he was invited to Japan where his methods were adopted. The success of Deming’s principles completely transformed Japanese business.
He became the first recipient of the Deming Prize. The Deming prize was instituted by the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers and is awarded each year in Japan to a statistician for contributions to statistical theory. The Deming prize for application is awarded to a company for improved use of statistical theory in organization, consumer research, design of product and production. W. Edwards Deming strongly believes in a system known as Total Quality Management (TQM). He enforces the practice of recognition and promotion of top quality managers who know and understand what needs to be done to be fully successful now and in the future.
He states (Teachings, n. d. ) in his excerpt …from Chapter 4 of The New Economics, second edition… The prevailing style of management must undergo transformation. A system cannot understand itself. The transformation requires a view from outside…. [called] a system of profound knowledge…. The first step is transformation of the individual…. Once the individual understands the system of profound knowledge, he will apply its principles in every kind of relationship with other people. He will have a basis for judgment of his own decisions and for transformation of the organizations that he belongs to….
A manager of people needs to understand that all people are different. This is not ranking people. He needs to understand that the performance of anyone is governed largely by the system that he works in, the responsibility of management. His 14 points for management in industry, education, and government are somewhat of trademarks for Deming. He feels that, because of the success of Japanese business, the United States should “transform” to these points for optimal management success. The 14 points, as described in Deming’s Out of the Crisis (1986, pp. 23-24), “…are the basis for transformation of American ndustry. It will not suffice merely to solve problems, big or little. Adoption and action on the 14 points are a signal that the management intend to stay in business and aim to protect investors and jobs…. The 14 points apply anywhere, to small organizations as well as to large ones, to the service industry as well as to manufacturing. They apply to a division within a company. ” The 14 points. 1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and to stay in business, and to provide jobs. 2. Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age.
Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change. 3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place. 4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move toward a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust. 5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs. . Institute training on the job. 7. Institute leadership (see Point 12 and Ch. 8). The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers. 8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company (see Ch. 3). 9. Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service. 0. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force. 11a. Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership. b. Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership. 12a. Remove barriers that rob the ourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality. b. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objective (see Ch. 3). 13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement. 14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody’s job.
In short, Deming’s thought is to envision long-term profit for business by maintaining high levels of motivation and satisfaction in the people that make up that business. Root out detriments such as fear, anger, jealousy, and revenge to instill self and mutual respect and to foster pride in workmanship. Allow all levels of the organization to be involved and share a part of business improvements as a team, not as individuals. This makes up total quality, and equality, in management and organizations as a whole. Peter F. Drucker was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educated there and in England.
He took his doctorate in public and international law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frankfurt, Germany. He then worked as an economist for an international bank in London. Drucker came to the United States in 1937. He began his teaching career as professor of politics and philosophy at Bennington College; for more than twenty years he was professor of management at the Graduate Business School of New York University. The recipient of many awards and honorary degrees, Peter Drucker has, since 1971, been Clarke Professor of Social Sciences at Claremont Graduate University.
Its Graduate Management School was named after him in 1984. Drucker has been hailed in the United States and abroad as the seminal thinker, writer, and lecturer on the contemporary organization. Drucker is a writer, teacher, and consultant specializing in strategy and policy for businesses and social sector organizations. He has consulted with many of the world’s largest corporations as well as with nonprofit organizations, small and entrepreneurial companies, and with agencies of the U. S. government (Thought leaders forum: Peter F. Drucker Biography, 2002). Drucker’s way of thinking is more of the Contemporary School, that is, he eels as though much of what is taught and practiced in the name of management is sorely out of date. With the rising of a new economic era involving new technologies, trends, principles, markets, and institutions, he is concerned that management practices are not keeping up with the change. ”As every seasoned executive has learned, few policies remain valid for as long as 20 to 30 years. Nor do most assumptions about the economy, about business, about technology remain valid longer than that. Yet most of our assumptions about business, technology and organization are at least 50 years old.
They have outlived their time. As a result we are preaching, teaching and practicing policies that are increasingly at odds with reality and therefore counterproductive” (Drucker, 1980, p. 43). With respect to the assumptions Drucker talks about, he feels the basic assumptions about reality are the paradigms of a social discipline such as management and that they are more important than are the paradigms for, say, a natural science; no mater what the prevailing general theory is for a natural science, the outcome of what is to be will always be. With management, what will be will only be what we as a people make of it.
Drucker fears that assumptions are made that management is only associated with business management, however, it applies to all aspects of management, business as well as nonbusiness. Drucker (1988) acknowledges the importance of breaking down the artificial distinction between business and nonbusiness organization. He feels the growth sector of a developed society in the 21st century is most unlikely to be business. The growth sectors in the 20th century in developed countries are in nonbusiness, in government, in the professions, in health care, in education.
In the 21st century Drucker believes that trend is going to continue, so the nonprofit social sector is where management is today most needed and where systematic, principled, theory-based management can yield the greatest results fastest. Both Deming and Drucker urge management organizations to adapt to an ever-changing world. Deming relies on a “one team” theory where all those involved in an organizations should work together, build together, and reap the rewards together at any point of change.
Drucker persues the mind frame of exceptional managers already prepared for what lies ahead, with the knowledge of how to successfully implement the practices and teachings of future change. The choice of which theory to follow could make or break an up-and-coming business or and established industry. References Biography. (n. d. ). Retrieved July 2, 2002, from The W. Edwards Deming Institute Web site: http://www. deming. org/theman/biography. html Deming, W. Edwards. (1986). Out of the Crisis. Cambridge, Mass: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for Advanced Engineering Study.
Drucker, Peter F. (1980). Managing in turbulent times. New York: Harper & Row. Drucker, Peter F. (1988). The coming of the new organization. In Harvard business review on knowledge management (pp. 1-19). Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing. Teachings. (n. d. ). Retrieved July 2, 2002, from The W. Edwards Deming Institute Web site: http://www. deming. org/theman/teachings. html Thought leaders forum: Peter F. Drucker Biography. (updated 2002, July 2). Retrieved July 2, 2002, from The Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management Web site: http://www. pfdf. org/index. html
