Are there differences between managing an airbase, a hospital and a software company, between a retail store and a catholic diocese?
Of course there are, but they are "amazingly fewer than either chain stores or bishops believe", wrote Peter Drucker in "Managing Challenges for the 21st Century", (1999).
I love this quote:
"The greatest differences are in the terms individual organizations use. Otherwise the differences are mainly in application rather than in principles. There are not even tremendous differences in tasks and challenges. The executives of all these organizations spend for instance, about the same amount of their time on peoples problems - and the peoples problems are almost always the same. Ninty per cent or so of what each of these organizations is concerned is with is generic. And the differences in respect to the last ten per cent are not greater between businesses and non-businesses than they are between businesses in different industries, for example between between a multinational bank and a toy factory. In every organization - business or non-business alike - only the last 10% of management has to b fitted to the organization's specific mission, its specific culture, its specific history and its specific vocabulary."
In future, management innovations will arise particularly through combining management ideas from different sectors of society. Being receptive brings about complexity and variance in management.