Page 144 - The Drucker Lectures

Knowledge Lecture IV [ 125

say capitalists—that is, people who knew how to use money to
organize production.
And now, with information becoming the new principle of
organization, what are the new classes? The blue-collar worker
is already pretty much gone as a determining class. I’m not say-
ing just in numbers, but they are no longer center stage. They
may still get an Oscar for best supporting role, but nobody buys
a ticket to see the best supporting role. The knowledge worker is
rapidly taking center stage.
Who is going to succeed the capitalist? Well, it is pretty clear
who it is because that person is already on stage: it is the man-
ager. But then, to whom and for what is management account-
able? The capitalist says only to the stockholders. We know that
that’s not good enough. It is predictable that those economies
that are going to grow and develop will not be dominated by
immediate stockholders’ gains, because that’s too short run, and
most of the things you have to do to create wealth-producing
capacity take five to ten years.
So let me say we will need much less money. When you look
at the new industries—software compared with an integrated
steel mill—they are not capital intensive. This is not to say that
money will be unimportant. But it will mean that you can’t base
control on the ability to marshal capital for productivity. Instead,
it will be based on an ability to marshal the scarce critical re-
source of knowledge.
This then raises questions: What is performance? How is it
measured? How do you prevent abuse of power—and a lot of
what you have seen in the conglomerates is abuse of power be-
cause the only purpose of the conglomeration was to enrich man-
agement and to feed its vanity. It served no economic purpose,
and that’s abuse of power. What is the balance between short
range and long range, the balance between market standing and
profitability, the balance between innovation and continuity?