Joseph A. Maciariello: Drucker’s Legitimate Successor

A great Professor who systematized Drucker's ideas, philosophy, and management theory with Professor Drucker, and taught Drucker management theory passionately than anyone else

Tomomasa Yagisawa
Drucker Workshop Board
Claremont Graduate University Alumni Association Board

Summary: Claremont Graduate University Professor Emeritus Joseph A. Maciariello passed away on July 1, 2020. Many people remember him as a wonderful gentleman, a beloved friend, and a passionate Professor. In the middle of his career, Professor Maciariello shifted his academic domain from management control systems to the management theory of Drucker. Here I would like to describe Professor Maciariello 's achievements and accomplishments and remember his personality. Professor Maciariello will be remembered as a person of integrity, and as the legitimate successor to Drucker, who systematized Drucker's ideas, philosophy, and management theory with Professor Drucker, and taught Drucker management theory passionately than anyone else.

Claremont Graduate University Professor Emeritus Joseph A. Maciariello passed away on July 1, 2020, at the age of 78.

Many people spoke of Professor Maciariello as a fine gentleman and a beloved friend.

A trustworthy and well-loved man

A brilliant scholar, a great teacher, and yet he's so modest that it's very difficult to recognize it.

A funny professor who tells funny jokes.

An enthusiastic teacher who lectures in a surprisingly loud voice.

The door to the professor's office is always open, a mentor who always welcomed students….

On August 16, 2020, more than 30 of Professor Joe Maciariello's students, friends, and colleagues from the United States, Thailand, New Zealand, China, and Japan gathered online to talk and remember Professor Joe Maciariello.

Professor Maciariello's numerous academic and educational activities included producing educational materials on the management theory of Professor Peter F. Drucker, writing and editing books, and lecturing on Drucker's management theory in the MBA course at the Drucker School. After the passing of Professor Drucker in 2005, he concentrated his education and research on cultivating Professor Drucker's intellectual legacy and was active in a wide range of activities beyond the framework of the Drucker School. He was the author of many books, including "The Daily Drucker," "Drucker's Lost Art of Management," "The Effective Executive in Action," "Management Revised Edition," and "A Year with Peter Drucker: 52 Weeks of Coaching for Leadership Effectiveness. "

Compared with his great achievement of systematizing the material and making Drucker's management theory into teaching materials, Professor Maciariello is not so well known in Japan. Here, I would like to summarize his achievements and remember his personality.

Dedicated to Drucker’s Intellectual Assets 

Joseph A. Maciariello was a second-generation Italian immigrant born in 1941 in Troy, New York, and raised in Mechanicville, a factory town in upstate New York. He graduated summa cum laude from Bryant College in Rhode Island with a bachelor's degree in business administration and joined the faculty at Union College in Schenectady, New York, where he earned a master's degree in industrial administration.

It was during his career as a financial analyst and controller at the Hamilton Standard, a company involved in the Apollo program, that he stumbled upon Drucker's work.

Then he entered the doctorate program at New York University in 1973 under the tutelage of William Jack Baumol, a two-time nominee for the Nobel Prize in economics. When he entered New York University, Professor Drucker was teaching at the same university. It was here that he met his destiny.

In 1979, he applied for a position at Claremont Graduate University and accepted an adjunct professorship at Claremont Mckenna College and Claremont Graduate University. He moved with his family to Claremont in Southern California, but as an East Coast native, Joe Maciariello didn't know much about Southern California, let alone Claremont.

Professor Maciariello recognized Drucker as a "rare inheritor of the renaissance" and tried to contact the great man whenever possible at Claremont.

“If he needed a ride somewhere, I gave him a ride, and I always had many questions for him.”

From around 1999, Professor Maciariello and Professor Drucker began to work together on a number of projects, and this continued until Professor Drucker's passing in 2005.

Since the passing of Professor Drucker, Professor Maciariello has worked variously with the Shao Foundation in China and the California Institute of Advanced Management in the United States, among others, and the Joseph A. Maciariello Institute of Management as a Liberal Art was also founded.

In 2017, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University and an honorary doctorate from HHL Leipzig, the oldest business school in Germany.

Developed Drucker Management Theory as a Subject

Graduates of the Drucker School under the tutelage of Professor Maciariello are unanimously saying:

Came to Drucker because of Peter Drucker, stayed at Drucker because of Joe

Around 2000, Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management, Claremont Graduate University (now the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management), c classes are primarily for Executive MBA students, and MBA students at the Drucker School may take Prof. Drucker's classes if there is a capacity. Only a few MBA students, not all of them, were able to attend the Prof. Drucker's class among the Executive MBA students. In addition, young MBA students sometimes had difficulty in following the Prof. Drucker's class because of the quality and quantity of education required to understand the lecture of Prof. Drucker. Additionally, Professor Drucker was over 90 years old then, the reality is that he could retire at any time.

Professor Maciariello shifted from his original area of expertise in Managerial Accounting and Control to a new area of research and education that would "systematize the intellectual assets of Professor Drucker." One of his early initiatives was the development of the MBA subject: Drucker on Management. The MBA students' real needs are extracted from the intellectual assets of Professor Drucker, and then the management education curriculum is structured based on these assets.

At the site of Prof. Drucker's lecture and Prof. Maciariello's lecture on Drucker on Management, Room 16 of the Drucker School, June 25, 2007.

Maciariello's Drucker on Management was unique in its development process. He consulted with Professor Drucker on what MBA students needed to succeed in their future careers and develop a teaching plan for the class, while Drucker continued to advise Professor Maciariello throughout the course, receiving reports on how the class was going. This was a true example of kaizen. Professor Drucker himself could not have done it alone, as he systematized Drucker's management theory as a "subject. " The essence of Drucker on Management was carried over into Professor Maciariello's teaching activities and the curriculum of the Drucker School, although the nature of Drucker on Management was changed after a few years of implementation.

I will attempt to reproduce here what the Drucker on Management program was like.

Textbooks/assignment books and materials:
· Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices / Peter F. Drucker
· Management Challenges for the 21st Century / Peter F. Drucker
· Peter F. Drucker Management Cases
· The Soul of the Firm / C. William Pollard
· Work & Human Nature / Joseph A. Maciariello
· Peter F. Drucker Corpedia Modules

Reference books:
· The Next Society
· The Effective Executive

We began with a discussion based on the Management Challenges for the 21st Century.

The first assignment was as follows

Ⅰ. Innovation & Change

1. Provide an example of each of the three policies Drucker identifies for making the future.
--Organized abandonment
--Organized improvement
--Exploitation of success

2. Provide an example of each of the seven methods of looking for an anticipating change. Consult each of the two books to answer this question.

(1) The organization’s own and its competitors’ unexpected successes and failures.
(2) Incongruities in production process, distribution process, and customer behavior.
(3) Process needs.
(4) Changes in industry and market structures.
(5) Changes in demographics.
(6) Changes in meaning and perception.
(7) New knowledge.

3. What is the right way to introduce change into an organization?

4. How should change be balanced with continuity?

5. Why is it important to “make change” in addition to adapting to change?

Ⅱ. Strengths and Weaknesses

1. How do you assess your strengths? What steps are you taking to maintain and improve your strengths? How can this course help you develop your strengths?
2. What are your weaknesses? How do you plan to deal with these weaknesses? How can this course help you shore up your weaknesses?
3. What reasoning is behind the adage “you should be eager to stay but ready to go?” As a knowledge worker, how do you react to this saying?
4. What are your outside interests? Why does Drucker recommend that we develop these interests?

Ⅲ. From Data Literacy to Information Literacy

1. What must be done in an enterprise to move from data literacy to information literacy?
2. What is the biggest challenge in moving from data literacy to information literacy?
3. What is the difference between basic structural information and information for wealth creation?

After these Management Challenges for the 21st Century exercises, a reading of Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices and related weekly reflection papers on the difficult questions in The Peter F. Drucker Management Cases are designed to give students a strong understanding of Drucker's point of view. The Peter F. Drucker Management Cases include the following case exercises:

・The Peerless Starch Company of Blair, Indiana（Case 25）
・Civil Rights and the Quaker Conscience
・The Aftermath of Tyranny
・Research Strategy and Business Objectives（Case 37）
・Who is the Brightest Hamster in the Laboratory? (Case 38)
・Failed Promotion
・Lyndon Johnson’s Decision (Case 32)

Professor Maciariello incorporated the responses from the class into Management Cases: Revised Edition (Harper Collins, 2008).

The e-Learning session, taught by Professor Drucker, was also included in the Drucker on Management course. This enabled the students to follow Drucker's instruction at their own pace, thus keeping their knowledge level at a certain level and leading to a high level of discussion in the class. Mr. C. William Pollard, former chairman of Service Master, who consulted with Professor Drucker, was invited as a guest lecturer to the class, and he conveyed the validity of Drucker's writings and ideas. In this way, Professor Maciariello was a master at stitching a practitioner's story into his classes.

Mr. Pollard and Professor Maciariello asked the students the following questions

1. If you were the CEO of ServiceMaster in 2000, what would be your priorities for the future? What would you change or abandon? What would you build upon or seek to enhance?
2. Drucker suggests that as part of meeting the challenges for the 21st century, leaders have to do a better job of managing themselves. What have you learned from the ServiceMaster experience about managing yourself? What is it about the culture of ServiceMaster that may be of help or hindrance in supporting the leadership of a community of trust?
3. Drucker states that one cannot manage change. One can only be ahead of change. What have you learned from the ServiceMaster experience about staying ahead of change? What is the role of profit in helping one to stay ahead of change?
4. What should be the “values” of a business firm?

These are quite thought-provoking questions. Students who were familiar with Drucker's management theory were surprisingly in the minority at the Drucker School, and many of them did not know Drucker until they enter the school. It is a credit to Professor Maciariello as an educator that he made it possible to combine the MBA and Drucker's management theory.

In the classroom, Professor Maciariello spoke loudly and enthusiastically, eliciting the thoughts of each student. Graduates of the school agree that the loudness of his voice was a reflection of his passion for his students to learn Drucker Management Theory. He did not hesitate to give A+ grades to students who wrote excellent reports and commented that their work was "as good as Drucker's. "

In the final lecture of the Drucker on Management course I attended, Professor Maciariello concluded with the following comment:

“With Drucker's management training, you have a clear differentiator from other business schools. Just Do It!”

Judeo-Christianity

The historical view and values rooted in Judeo-Christianity, a religious view held by many in the west, are at the root of Drucker's philosophy. Professor Maciariello, who was a devout Christian, explained Judeo-Christianity in a way that avoided turning the course into a religious one. It may come as a surprise to those who view Drucker through the scope of business administration, but Judeo-Christianity helps to understand the essence of why Drucker saw things the way he did. Professor Maciariello described the essence of this in his book, Drucker's Lost Art of Management. Incidentally, the last doctoral student under the supervision of Professor Maciariello is now preparing the doctoral thesis on the relationship between Drucker's philosophy and Christianity.

Drucker’s Real Concern

In the spring of 2004, when I was about to finish my studies at the Drucker School, I asked Professor Maciariello to give a special opportunity to have a dialogue with the students from Japan. More than 10 Japanese students gathered around Professor Maciariello for lunch at the Hagelburger’s cafeteria on campus, where Claremont Graduate University students socialize. Professor Maciariello seemed to enjoy this opportunity to learn more about Japan, which he had never been, but heard about from Drucker for many times. As the afternoon class was about to start, and it was time to end the lunch, I asked Professor Maciariello if he had something important for Japanese Students to bring back to Japan as the conclusion of the lunch.

Professor Maciariello replied,

Peter's interest isn't actually in management.

Then he began to tell a surprising story. The Japanese students, who had been chattering away at each other quieted down, and Professor Maciariello continued.

"Peter's real interest is not in organizations and management. The real concern is the happiness of each individual and the functioning of the society they live in. But for the society to function and to be happy, each of us is too weak. Therefore, the organization with the combined strength of each of us plays an important role as the organ of the society. For this organ of society to play its role, it is necessary to manage it well. The purpose is not the excellent management of the organization. It is the happiness of each individual and the functioning of the society that they live in. I urge you to make that happen. The Drucker School will have provided you with sufficient basic management skills to make that happen.”

An Intellectual Journey

With my friends in Japan and in the U.S., I have been organizing a book club online since 2010, and the first book in the series was Management: Revised Edition, the second was The Effective Executive, and the third was Drucker's Lost Art of Management. While reading Management: Revised Edition and Drucker's Lost Art of Management, I had the luxury of getting advice and commentary directly from the author, Professor Maciariello.

When I asked Professor Maciariello to sign copies of The Daily Drucker in November 2004, he said “It is Peter's book. I will not sign anything that Peter does not sign.” Then he gave me a notepad with the phone number of Drucker's house on it and gave me a chance to meet Professor Drucker. He made sure that my copy of The Daily Drucker was signed by Professor Drucker and wrote in the copy of the book, "Thank you for the encouragement to continue this work, Thank you for your "friendship." This was exactly the Maciariello way.

Professor Maciariello visited Japan for the first time in May 2012. I discussed with the Dean at the time: Hideki Yamawaki and Professor Maciariello, then organized the lecture by Professor Maciariello at the top floor of Hibiya Library Studio Plus in the Hibiya Library, where the lecture was held under the auspices of Drucker School alumni and widely welcomed interested people.
Professor Maciariello's thoughts are evident in the e-mails I exchanged with him during the preparation of this lecture.

There is a resurgence of Drucker in Japan but not as much in the US. I want to promote the resurgence all around the world and would like to get the Japan Alums involved.

Unlike other books this one tries to get behind Drucker's methods and vision and therefore is more academic than almost all Drucker books.
we are not experts on Japanese Art and on Confusion ethics, both of which were important to Drucker so we did not do anything with these topics. Therefore, the book carries a Euro-American Centric view even though Japan was the place of his greatest impact. I hope I have made this clear. His ideas were very European although his applications were very Asian. We are not experts on Asia. We are experts on the formation of his ideas from European and American sources. I want that to be very clear otherwise people might be confused and upset.
There is much I have to learn about Japan.

In the lecture, the participants and Professor Maciariello had a lively discussion, and concluded with the followings:

Drucker, the social ecologist, recognized that change and discontinuity were a given part of existence and that individuals, organizations and nations must recognize this fact in order to survive and prosper.

The social ecologist seeks to extrapolate these great changes into the future, and uncover opportunities.

Against all this change comes the increased need to be vigilant.

In these days of global pandemics, plus many other things happening, and the degree of VUCA is increasing, the conclusion above is of growing importance.

True Drucker Scholar: Systematized Drucker's Intellectual Assets

Professor Maciariello shifted the focus of his activities from the Drucker School to the Drucker Institute, where he concentrated on preserving Professor Drucker's intellectual assets and on promoting Drucker's work in various countries and regions of the world, including but not limited to students at the Drucker School. He has expanded his activities to include the development of teaching materials, classes and writings for those who need management philosophy. In addition, he created a new and revised edition of Drucker’s magnum opus: Management, Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, called Management Revised Edition. To pass down Drucker's management theory to future generations, Professor Maciariello replaced some of the examples in Management, Tasks, Responsibilities, and Practices that had become obsolete over time with universal contents that can withstand the passage of time. In addition to the content of Management, Tasks, Responsibilities, and Practices, the book includes 32 years of work from the publication of the book until Professor Drucker's death, and yet it contains over 800 pages of the original 61 chapters of the book. It was a major project that shortened Drucker's book to 46 chapters, making it less than 600 pages readable. It was a feat that only Professor Maciariello could have accomplished with access to and a deep understanding of Drucker's extensive material.
When Professor Maciariello approached Professor Drucker to begin work on a new and revised edition of his management book, Professor Drucker did not see it as a revision of his magnum opus, Management, Tasks, Responsibilities, and Practices, but as a revision of The Practice of Management. When Drucker later realized that what Professor Maciariello had said was Management, Tasks, Responsibilities and Practices, Professor Drucker told Professor Maciariello that “it is going to be a lot of work.”

There are three exhaustive books on management by Professor Drucker. The first is 1954's The Practice of Management, an update of which was followed by 1973's Management, Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, and an update of which was followed by 1999's Management Challenges for the 21st Century. This Management Revised Edition can be regarded as the fourth book which includes a solid collection of Drucker's management theory since 1999.

In this Management Revised Edition published in 2008 and A Year with Peter Drucker: 52 Weeks of Coaching for Leadership Effectiveness published in 2014, the table of contents of these two books shows the ability of Professor Maciariello to structure his teaching and training programs. The structure of these two books will be a useful reference for developing Drucker-related programs. The table of contents of the Management Revised Edition is also a list of the important topics that Professor Maciariello has thoughtfully concluded to study in Drucker's management theory.

・Management’s New Realities
・Business Performance
・Performance in Service Institutions
・Productive Work and Achieving Worker
・Social Impacts and Social Responsibilities
・The Manager’s Work and Jobs
・Managerial Skills
・Innovation and Entrepreneurship
・Managerial Organization
・New Demands on the Individual

A Year with Peter Drucker: 52 Weeks of Coaching for Leadership Effectiveness is structured as follows, in which Professor Maciariello discusses the most important aspects of leadership development based on Drucker's teachings:

・Effective Leaders
・Management is a Human Activity
・Setting Your Sights on the Important, Not the Urgent
・The Road Map to Personal Effectiveness
・Management in a Pluralistic Society of Organizations
・Navigating a Society in Transition
・Maintaining Your Organization Through Change
・Structuring Your Organization
・Managing Your Members
・The Succession Decision
・Lessons from the Social Sector on the Power of Purpose
・Developing Oneself from Success to Significance
・Character and Legacy

Peter Drucker’s Legitimate Successor

Most of Drucker's work in the last years of his life was carried out in collaboration with Professor Maciariello.
Professor Maciariello's title at Claremont was the Horton Professor of Economics (later to become the Horton Professor of Management). This was an adjunct position at Claremont McKenna College, one of the colleges of the Claremont Colleges, and not a full-time professor at the Drucker School. Dean Yamawaki felt that the title of Horton Professor did not reflect the outstanding achievements of Professor Maciariello when Professor Hideki Yamawaki was the Dean of the School, so Professor Maciariello was appointed to the Marie Ranke Clarke Professor of Social Science and Management, the same title as Professor Drucker, making Professor Maciariello the rightful successor to Professor Drucker. Professor Maciariello was delighted to inherit Drucker's title.

What do you want to be remembered for?

When Professor Maciariello was asked what do you want to be remembered for, he replied "a person of integrity. " I believe that Professor Maciariello is a person of integrity and at the same time, the rightful successor of Professor Drucker, who, together with Professor Drucker, systematized the ideas, philosophy, and management theory of Professor Drucker, and taught Drucker's management theory with more enthusiasm than anyone else.

Professor Joe Maciariello. A wonderful teacher and friend.

Finally, I would like to introduce some books and references of Professor Maciariello. I hope it will be useful for future research at the Drucker Workshop.

Bibliography

【Books】

Joseph A. Maciariello
Lasting Value: Lessons from and Century of Agility at Lincoln Electric (Wiley, 1999)
A Year with Peter Drucker: 52 weeks of coaching for leadership effectiveness (Harper Collins, 2014)

With Calvin J. Kirby
Management Control Systems (2nd Edition) (Wiley, 1994)

With Peter F. Drucker
The Daily Drucker (Harper Collins, 2004)
The Effective Executive in Action (Harper Collins, 2006)
Management: Revised Edition (Harper Collins, 2008)
Management Cases: Revised Edition (Harper Collins, 2008)

Edited with Craig Pearce and Hideki Yamawaki
The Drucker Difference: What the World's Greatest Management Thinker Means to Today's Business Leaders (Mc Graw Hill, 2010)

With Karen E. Linkletter
Drucker’s Lost Art of Management (Mc Graw Hill, 2011)
In fact, there is one important book missing from this list of books. It is Professor Maciariello's last book, completed on Memorial Day 2020, shortly before his death. What does Professor Maciariello have to say to us in his last book?

【Movies】

Drucker’s Lost Art of Management—Part I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W6JVWLOzFY&feature=related

Drucker’s Lost Art of Management—Part II
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJT_Zu-lV6I&feature=related

TEDx Talk Who Will Drive Unbounded Innovation?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz858L7YKG0

【Sources】
1: https://www.cgu.edu/news/2020/07/passings-joseph-maciariello-1941-2020-peter-druckers-legitimate-successor/
2: MGT 343 Drucker on Management Course Packet
3: Email to the author from Professor Joseph Maciariello on April 4, 2012
4：Professor Maciariello's slides from May 16, 2012
5：Management Revised Edition. New York: HarperCollins, 2008, pp. 528
6: Management Revised Edition. New York: HarperCollins, 2008, pp. vii-ix
7: A Year with Peter Drucker: 52 Weeks of Coaching for Leadership Effectiveness. New York: HarperCollins, 2014, pp. xi-xvi
8: By Celeste Palmer February 2020
9: By Professor Hideki Yamawaki August 2020

【About the author】 Director of the Drucker Society. Claremont Graduate University Alumni Association Board. M.S. (Science Education), Graduate School of Education, Yokohama National University, 1997, Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management, USA, 2004, Claremont Graduate University, MBA (Strategic Management), Connective Leadership Institute Certified Practitioner, EMSi Fellow