excerpts...

Making resources productive is the specific job of management... The history of management as a distinct social function began a hundred years ago with the discovery that resources can be managed for productivity. It is only managers -- not nature or laws of economics or governments -- that make resource productive. Resources can be made productive in the individual plant or enterprise, the individual store, the individual hospital, the individual office, the individual port, the individual research laboratory. They are made productive -- or deprived of productivity -- by individual managers within their own individual sphere of responsibility.

The turning point was Frederick W. Taylor’s discovery, around 1875, that work could be managed and thereby made more productive. Before Taylor, the only way to get more output was to work harder and longer. But Taylor saw that the way to get more output was to “ work smarter,” that is, more productively. He saw that the productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager. Taylor also saw -- although he never formulated the insight into a theory -- that productivity is the result of the application to work of the specific human capital resource, knowledge.

Productivity is the source of all economic value.

Four key resources have to be managed consistently, systematically, and conscientiously for productivity. They are capital, crucial physical assets, time, and knowledge.