Drucker, Business, Economics, Humanities, and the Liberal Arts

The trend these days seems to be that many, or some universities are moving away from the humanities and the liberal arts to areas where there is demand for jobs. This might be considered a sound move, to restructure, to provide more resources into areas where there is more demand for jobs.

The areas of course being either eliminated and or reduced are the liberal arts and humanities areas, as maybe there are less students who want to major in those areas and they want either information technology type jobs, business type jobs, or engineering type jobs.

The problem with this thinking is that students and universities underestimate the need for the liberal arts and the humanities in each of the above areas.

Perhaps there are many in the academy, who know and understand the need for the liberal arts and the humanities but cost pressures have forced them to takes actions that have reduced the LA and humanities.

Peter Drucker is an example of a management thinker and professor who always thought of management as a liberal art.

Drucker never ceased to consider the liberal arts to be the heart and soul of the managerial process.

He always thought without the liberal arts, management would degenerate into a bloodless and inanimate object.

Source: John E. Flaherty (19919). Peter Drucker: Shaping the managerial mind. San Francisco: John Wiley and Sons.

Perhaps the 2008 global financial crisis, which of course started in the US is the exact outcome of business and industry that loses its way in society and puts profit above everything else.

Steve Jobs and Apple and the iPhone are another example that we can relate  to engineering and technology.

Jobs, when he introduced the iPhone mentioned how the humanities and the liberal arts always shaped his thinking in the products he created.

How many companies, or even engineers these days think of the liberal arts and the humanities when they create new products or service for the good of society or their customers or potential future customers?

How many companies these days think of the liberal arts and the humanities when they think of their workforce? Is the workforce just a number a commodity to be used and deleted when the usefulness of the employee has worn out or do they think of the workforce as a asset and stakeholder in the company where there is synergy between the workforce and management for the good of the company and the good of society.

In conclusion, companies are about people, people is about society. Companies can not afford to forget the idea that the humanities and the liberal arts are just as important to a business as are numbers.


© 2020, Tom Metts, all rights reserved