November 3rd and 4th 2011, Vienna
3rd Global Peter Drucker Forum
Corporate executives, NGO leaders, representatives from the public sector and other thought leaders will convene in Vienna to discuss how management can regain its legitimacy in society. A significant contingent representing the younger generation—including winners of the Global Peter Drucker Challenge, our worldwide essay contest – will also participate.
At a time when public trust in business has fallen to levels not seen in recent history, the themes of responsibility and legitimacy of management is red hot, as suggested by Michael Porter and Mark Kramer in their Harvard Business Review article: “The Big Idea: Creating Shared Value.”
As was so often the case, Peter Drucker laid the ground for this discussion long ago. “It is management’s . . . responsibility to make whatever is genuinely in the public good become the enterprise’s own self-interest,” he wrote in his 1954 landmark, The Practice of Management. Years, later, Drucker added: “Every single social and global issue of our day is a business opportunity in disguise.”
The late C.K. Prahalad expressed a similar notion at the Peter Drucker Centennial Forum in Vienna in 2009. “Business, as the most powerful force in society, must be the instrument of social justice,” he declared.
- C.K. Prahalad
The Peter Drucker Forum 2011 will address this subject from 3 angles:
Can managers achieve the squaring of the circle, being torn between the narrow view promoted by Milton Freedman (“The business of business is business”) and the broader view that every organization has some responsibility for the common good?
How can mangers discharge their professional responsibilities in today’s world?
Is there a common set of tasks and practices?
Can the professionalization of management help to find a new balance between society and the bottom line?
How is management responsibility and legitimacy viewed in emerging markets?
What lessons can they teach the developed world?
The Forum will be structured in half-day segments so that sufficient time will be available for panels and in-depth discussions in breakout sessions.
To read the background article CLICK HERE
