“Most, if not all, educated persons will practice
their knowledge as members of an organization. The educated person will
therefore have to prepare to live and work simultaneously in two cultures, that
of the intellectual, the specialist who focuses on words and ideas, and that of
the manager, who focuses on people and work. Intellectuals need their
organization as a tool; it enables them to practice their techne, their
specialized knowledge. Managers see knowledge as a means to the end of
organizational performance. Both are right. They are poles rather than
contradictions. Indeed, they need each other. The intellectual's world, unless
counterbalanced by the manager, becomes one in which everybody ‘does his own
thing’ but nobody does anything. The manager's world becomes bureaucratic and
stultifying without the offsetting influence of the intellectual.”— Austrian-born
American management consultant, educator, and author Peter F. Drucker (1909-2005)
, “The Rise of the Knowledge Society,” The Wilson Quarterly, Spring 1993
