Henry Mintzberg

Henry Mintzberg is an internationally renowned academic and author on business and management. He is currently the Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University in Canada, where he has been teaching since 1968.

Professor Mintzberg writes prolifically on the topic of management and business strategy, with more than 120 articles and ten books to his name. His seminal book, The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, criticizes some of the practices of strategic consulting today and is considered required reading for anyone who seriously wants to consider taking on a strategy-making role within their organisation.

Professor Mintzberg has recently published a book entitled Managers Not MBAs which outlines what he believes to be wrong with management education today and, rather controversially, singles out prestigious graduate management schools like Harvard Business School and the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania as examples of how obsession with numbers and an over-zealous attempt at making management into a science actually can damage the discipline of management. He also suggests that a new MBA program, targeted at practising managers (as opposed to younger students with little real world experience), and emphasizing on practical issues may be more suitable.

Ironically, although Professor Mintzberg is quite critical about the strategic consulting business, he has twice won the McKinsey Award for publishing the best article in the Harvard Business Review.