Dear employer, the verb has different meanings operate within the dictionary of the Institute of Catalan Studies: to work (an instrument) with the hand or hands to move (something) from one side to the other, using (something) or go. All of them involve action and provide a result. It's funny, because someone told me once that the term management had its origin in the verb handle. I honestly do not know if this relationship exists or if someone took advantage of the similarity to be funny, but in any case, whatever is true that both words have a meaning not very distant.

"Management is the organ of institutions ... the organ that converts a mob into a body, and human efforts into performance" (The organ is the management of institutions ... the organ that converts the masses in organization and human effort in yield), words of Peter Drucker, considered the father of management, died on November eleven, ready to do 96 years. M'estendré not in his biography or in his extensive bibliography - Google found 1,990,000 results by entering your name -. Only a few details to fix the character. He was Austrian, he was educated in Vienna and studied law in Germany, Frankfurt. During the thirties he emigrated to the U.S. where he root. In 1945 he published "Concept of the Corporation" - a paper written after their stay at General Motors on behalf of its general manager, Alfred Sloan - who was a bestseller and is considered the primary reference for the science of management . In this book, as Peter Drucker argued that workers should be considered a resource and not just a cost and that the world was going from a product economy to a knowledge economy. That said this, remember, in 1945.

Knowledge about business management today is heir to the contribution of this man. It is he who can receive the management, and I mean that the company and its management were there - and it was a historic institution - Drucker and what he did was to analyze, develop, explain and propose making clear what already existed and making contributions to improve it. Forty thousand books and articles are his legacy, but from the perspective of the theory of management, even more important are the contributions that others have done, along the path he opened JM Juran (1951, Quality Control Handbook), Philip Kotler (1963, Marketing management analysis, planning and control), Kenneth Andrews (1971, The concept of corporate strategy), Michael Porter (1980, Competitive Strategy, 1985, Competitive Advantage), Lyle Spencer (1993, Competence at Work), CK Prahalad and Gary Hamel (1994, Competing for the Future), R. Kaplan and D. Norton (1996, The Balanced Scorecard: Translating strategy into action), P. Pande, R. Neuman, and R. Cavanagh (2000, The Six Sigma Way: How GE, Motorola, and other top companies are honing their performances). That is, contributions to the quality, the marketing, strategy, etc.., With the characteristic that they are all with English as it comes from the Anglo-Saxon experience, but have been following the initiative of a Central as it was in Drucker.

The knowledge generated in concept, yet, sixty years since has become a science, a science that aims at the company in a very broad sense, and that occasionally debate on the specificity its object. A social science that has lived and still lives in many cases, inadequate to the predictability of the natural sciences and their methods is evident when the human influence on business activity. A young science as such is perhaps not as if the axioms of reference may have other sciences. A science that live in two types of researchers: the scientist interested in understanding their environment, and the "guru" - Tom Peters said he did not call "charlatans" because the word is too long - interested in making a business selling their ideas and attract more customers to their consultant. Both can use the most advanced methodologies, but have distinctly different objectives. A science that paradoxically aims to research an agent who often do not want to be; the company are usually jealous of his knowledge, has a culture of protection, and that does not help or disclosure of progress practical nor in their study by researchers from outside the companies has arisen. A growing science that aims to provide knowledge in the framework of the knowledge society, how can business. Because, dear friend employer, doing business, for most, it is an inspiration, not an improvisation; company is a way to work, and stress system applied to a known concept that is embodied in products and services.

Joseph Albet

Director of NCB ALBET DIRECTORS

www.albetconsellersbcn.org