Google: A Druckerian Ideal?

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It is not uncommon, he says, for a mealtime conversation to develop into a serious collaboration, often involving fellow employees he may never have met before. Once that happens, Ratner is likely to be off and running, using his 20% time to zip to Home Depot (HD) (where he can charge Google, without managerial approval, for basic supplies), build a prototype of his idea with some of his colleagues, and begin measuring its effectiveness.

A Dividend-Yielding Culture

The best innovations find their way in front of a supervisor and, if they make the cut, can ultimately win formal project status and funding. The ones that aren't so hot fade away—usually very quickly. "It's a real competitive place," Ratner says. "It's not all touchy-feely."

Google won't disclose what it spends on its myriad employee benefits, and a spokeswoman says that, in spite of the company's computational prowess, it can't quantify their effect on productivity. Clearly, however, the culture yields dividends. Among the projects that have emerged from 20% time are Gmail, Google News, and the Sky feature on Google Earth.

For Ratner, though, even the ideas that flame out have a tremendous value. The mere act of pursuing them, he says, speaks to "the entrepreneur, the artist" that tends to reside in many of Google's 15,000-plus employees. It fulfills the "need in every human to create," he adds.

What If the Going Gets Tough?

It must be noted that all of these offerings are relatively easy to provide when almost everything seems to be going without a glitch and the financial picture is so bright. Should Google's swagger give way to a big enough stumble—as has happened with countless other firms that once seemed invincible—its commitment in all these areas will surely be tested.

Over time, Drucker himself gave up on the notion of a "plant community," convinced, sadly, that most companies were consumed with the bottom line and little else. It also became more difficult to promote the corporate-community paradigm with job security in the U.S. and elsewhere growing ever more elusive. By the late 1980s, he had begun to look toward the nonprofit sector as the one that "gives people a sense of community, gives purpose, gives direction."

Perhaps he abandoned the model of workplace-as-social-institution too soon. Then again, who could have guessed that the world's most forward-thinking company in 2007 would have so boldly adopted a concept that Drucker framed more than half a century ago?

Rick Wartzman is the director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University and an Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation. He writes The Drucker Difference every other week for businessweek.com/managing/.