New York, November 12:

Peter Drucker, who pioneered management theory and became a sought-after advisor to corporations and governments, died yesterday, the university he worked with said. He was 95.

Drucker, who was born in pre-World War I Austria and studied in Germany before fleeing the Nazis, built his ideas around the view that people are an organisation’s most valuable resource, said Claremont Graduate University’s announcement.

Drucker influenced or created most facets of modern management theory, including decentralisation, privatisation and the idea that the manager’s job was to free people to perform.

Drucker wrote more than three dozen books, countless newspaper columns and taught at Claremont until 2002.