Updates

A Monthly Newsletter on the happenings at the MLA Research Institute.

What is next-era leadership? It’s a fundamental rethink of what it means to lead in a world that has moved far, far beyond the conditions and institutions of the postwar era. Across two days of spirited interaction in Vienna, we’ll confront the shortcomings of leadership today – as it is practiced, researched, and taught – and move together toward better ways of building the capacities needed for the future.

Our subtitle for the 2025 Forum – All Hands on Deck – betrays one belief we already hold on the subject. What has been seen as a powerful role for individuals, and rare ones at that, must be reframed as a creative energy distributed across many. We all know that to lead is a verb, not a noun, and what matters is the positive change that leaders bring about through others. (Drucker himself stressed decades ago that the mark of effective leadership is outcomes, not attributes.) We should also know that when leadership is making great things happen, it isn’t because legions of followers have mindlessly shown up to take orders from some mogul, it’s because people eager to make life better have been inspired by a vision and purpose, have ideas for how to make progress, and know their efforts must be aligned to accomplish anything big.

Notice that, while the Drucker Forum has always focused on the management of organizations and workplaces, none of the above is expressed in such terms. This year, we engage with a crisis afflicting the world on every level. With Drucker, we see the health of whole societies in the strength of their pillar institutions – and understand that next-era leadership must be cultivated in every corner.

Join us November 6 – 7 to share ideas and experience in the splendid setting of the Hofburg Palace. And be part of leadership’s next-era vanguard.

The twentieth century brought a massive shift in the developed world, from national economies centered on industrial manufacturing to a global economy dominated by knowledge-based organizations. It’s debatable that the practice of management ever caught up with the implications—yet now, a fresh wave of transformative change is upon us. 

We think Peter Drucker was right that “the most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century is to increase the productivity of knowledge work and knowledge workers.” Now a quarter-century down the road, where do we see great management achieving that higher performance, and how? What lessons can we take away from the pioneers of the next knowledge work?

MLARI hosted a symposium @ the Alhambra on Saturday, October 5, titled: “AI AND ETHICS: THE INTERSECTION OFHUMANITY AND TECHNOLOGY”. The symposium included a wide range of panelists with diverse professional backgrounds who discussed topics related to artificial intelligence, ethics, and the implications for humanity of leveraging artificial intelligence. The program included a keynote speaker.

The contest aims to engage the young generation in addressing the opportunities and challenges of our time in the light of Peter Drucker’s human-centered management philosophy.

As in previous years, the Peter Drucker Society invites students, managers and entrepreneurs aged 18-35 around the globe to submit an essay on: 

The Next Education:  How a New Generation Must be Equipped to Lead in a Crazy World.

A conference held by The Centre for Management as a Liberal Art (CMLA), which is a joint initiative of Hang Seng University in Hong Kong and the MLA Academy Hong Kong.   

MLARI Director Karen Linkletter was a participant.

In turning management into a coherent discipline, Peter Drucker embraced its tensions, insisting on the need for integration and synthesis as much as analysis. Standing on his shoulders, we now need to create a fresh synthesis that enables us to break through today’s performance barriers and unleash a new century of world progress and prosperity.

Starting now, the Vienna Center for Management Innovation invites you to support this vital and urgent work by becoming part of the community that will guide it over the next five years 

A Drucker Seminar at the HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management, Leipzig, Germany.   MLARI Director Karen Linkletter was a participant.

This informal Zoom discussion explored the many ways character matters at the individual, group, organization, and societal level. It went beyond an understanding of character and its importance to demonstrate how we can all develop character and apply it in our organizations. The conversation, which was open to the authors who participated in the Amplify series on character leadership, and other members of Arthur D. Little's open consulting community, built on the topics addressed in these two Amplify issues. The discussion was facilitated by the issues’ Co-Guest Editors, Dusya Vera, Professor of Strategy at Ivey Business School, and Ana Ruiz Pardo, Postdoctoral Research Associate at Ivey Business School.

The 2023 conference explored what it meant to build creative resilience as a capacity—as a new set of reflexes at every level of the organization, and throughout its ecosystem of suppliers, customers, and other partners. They drew on real-world stories and research findings from multiple disciplines to spur creative dialogue in Vienna—and new insights for us all for preparing our teams and institutions for future waves of disruption.

In this October 2023 symposium, Dr. Abraham Khoureis, MLARI Director Dr. Karen Linkletter, and other Thought Leader Panelists guests explored the legacy of The Peter Drucker.