When Peter Drucker published his first major book, The End of Economic Man, in 1939, the median compensation for chief executives of the biggest companies in America stood at about $1 million a year (in today’s dollars).
The median pay was still at roughly $1 million, in inflation-adjusted terms, when Drucker’s 1954 landmark, The Practice of Management, came out. Executive compensation was at the same level when his Managing for Resultsappeared in 1964. Ditto when Drucker’s Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices was released in 1973.
Then things exploded.
