A It has been said that Peter Drucker invented the discipline of management. Before he wrote his first book on the topic, he knew of only two companies in the world with management development programs. Ten years after the book’s publication, 3,000 companies were teaching the subject. Widely considered the father of “modern management,” Drucker authored 39 books and numerous scholarly and popular articles exploring how humans are organized in all sectors of society—business, government, and the nonprofit world. His writings anticipated many major developments of the late twentieth century, including privatization and decentralization; the rise of Japan as a world economic power; the decisive importance of marketing; and the emergence of the information society with its necessity of lifelong learning. B Drucker believed that writing was the foundation of all his work. His first book, The End of Economic Man: A Study of the New Totalitarianism, was published in 1937 in Europe and examined the spiritual and social origins of fascism. In 1940, before the United States entered World War II, he published The Future of Industrial Man, offering a social vision for the postwar world. In 1943, General Motors invited Drucker to study its management practices. He accepted

A The Irish elk, also known as the giant deer (Megaloceros giganteus), was once thought to have died out around the end of the last Ice Age, approximately 10,500 years ago, along with other large mammals like toothed cats, mastodons, giant sloths, and woolly rhinos. However, analysis of ancient bones and teeth by scientists in Britain and Russia shows that this massive herbivore survived until about 5,000 B.C.—more than three millennia later than previously believed. This finding suggests that additional factors beyond climate change likely contributed to the giant deer’s extinction, such as hunting or habitat destruction caused by humans. B The Irish elk earned its name because its well-preserved remains are often discovered in lake sediments beneath peat bogs in Ireland. It first appeared about 400,000 years ago in Europe and Central Asia. Using radiocarbon dating of skeletal remains and mapping the locations where these remains were unearthed, researchers concluded that the Irish elk was once widespread across Europe before the last “big freeze.” As the Ice Age ended, the deer’s range contracted to the Ural Mountains, in what is now Russia, which marks the boundary between Europe and Asia. C According to Professor Adrian Lister of University College

A Onion growers in eastern Oregon are adopting a system that saves water and keeps topsoil in place, while producing the highest quality “super colossal” onions. Pear growers in southern Oregon have reduced their use of some of the most toxic pesticides by up to two-thirds, and are still producing top-quality pears. Range managers throughout the state have controlled the poisonous weed tansy ragwort with insect predators and saved the Oregon livestock industry up to $4.8 million a year. B These are some of the results Oregon growers have achieved in collaboration with Oregon State University (OSU) researchers as they test new farming methods including integrated pest management (IPM). Nationwide, however, IPM has not delivered results comparable to those in Oregon. A recent US General Accounting Office (GAO) report indicates that while integrated pest management can result in dramatically reduced pesticide use, the federal government has been lacking in effectively promoting that goal and implementing IPM. Farmers also blame the government for not making the new options of pest management attractive. “Wholesale changes in the way that farmers control the pests on their farms is an expensive business,” says Tony Brown of the National Farmers Association. “If the farmers are

A Broadly speaking, proponents of CSR have used four arguments to make their case: moral obligation, sustainability, license to operate, and reputation. The moral appeal—arguing that companies have a duty to be good citizens and to “do the right thing”—is prominent in the goal of Business for Social Responsibility, the leading nonprofit CSR business association in the United States. It asks that its members “achieve commercial success in ways that honor ethical values and respect people, communities, and the natural environment.” Sustainability emphasizes environmental and community stewardship.An excellent definition was developed in the 1980s by Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland and used by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development: “Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”The notion of license to operate derives from the fact that every company needs tacit or explicit permission from governments, communities, and numerous other stakeholders to do business. Finally, reputation is used by many companies to justify CSR initiatives on the grounds that they will improve a company’s image, strengthen its brand, enliven employee morale, and even raise the value of its stock. B To advance CSR, we must root it in

A Excavations at the site of prehistoric Akrotiri, on the coast of the Aegean Sea, have revealed much about the technical aspects of pottery manufacture—indisputably one of the basic industries of this Greek city. However, considerably less is known about the socio-economic context and how production was organised. B The bulk of pottery found at Akrotiri is locally made and dates from the late fifteenth century BC. It clearly fulfilled a vast range of the settlement’s requirements: more than fifty different types of pots can be distinguished. The pottery includes a wide variety of functional types—such as storage jars, smaller containers, pouring vessels, cooking pots, and drinking vessels—all of which relate to specific activities and would have been made and distributed with those uses in mind.Given the large number of shapes produced and the relatively high degree of standardisation, it has generally been assumed that most, if not all, of Akrotiri’s pottery was produced by specialised craftsmen in a non-domestic context. Unfortunately, neither the potters’ workshops nor kilns have been found within the excavated area. This may be because the ceramic workshops were located on the periphery of the site, which has not yet been excavated.In any event, the ubiquity

A.  Most people today think of chocolate as something sweet to eat or drink that can be easily found in stores around the world. It might surprise you that chocolate was once highly treasured. The tasty secret of the cacao (Kah Kow) tree was discovered 2,000 years ago in the tropical rainforests of the Americas. The story of how chocolate grew from a local Mesoamerican beverage into a global sweet encompasses many cultures and continents. B.  Historians believe the Maya people of Central America first learned to farm cacao plants around two thousand years ago. The Maya took cacao trees from the rainforests and grew them in their gardens. They cooked cacao seeds, then crushed them into a soft paste. They mixed the paste with water and flavorful spices to make an unsweetened chocolate drink. The Maya poured the chocolate drink back and forth between two containers so that the liquid would have a layer of bubbles, or foam. Cacao and chocolate were an important part of Maya culture. There are often images of cacao plants on Maya buildings and art objects. Ruling families drank chocolate at special ceremonies. Even poorer members of the society could enjoy the drink once