Henry Mintzberg
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Henry Mintzberg (born September 2, 1939) is a Canadian academic and author on business and management. He is currently the Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at the
Desautels Faculty of Management The Desautels Faculty of Management is a faculty of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The faculty offers a range of undergraduate and graduate-level business programs, including the Bachelor of Commerce, Master of Business Adminis ...
of
McGill University McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter granted by King George IV,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill Universit ...
in
Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...
,
Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...
, Canada, where he has been teaching since 1968.


Early life

Mintzberg was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the son of Jewish parents Myer (a manufacturer) and Irene (Wexler) Mintzberg. He completed his undergraduate degree in
mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, and ...
at the
Faculty of Engineering Faculty may refer to: * Faculty (academic staff), the academic staff of a university (North American usage) * Faculty (division), a division within a university (usage outside of the United States) * Faculty (instrument), an instrument or warra ...
of
McGill University McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter granted by King George IV,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill Universit ...
. He completed his Master's degree in Management and PhD from the
MIT Sloan School of Management The MIT Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan or Sloan) is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs, ...
in 1965 and 1968, respectively.


Career

In 1997, Professor Mintzberg was made an Officer of the
Order of Canada The Order of Canada (french: Ordre du Canada; abbreviated as OC) is a Canadian state order and the second-highest honour for merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, after the Order of Merit. To coincide with the ...
. In 1998 he was made an Officer of the
National Order of Quebec The National Order of Quebec, termed officially in French as ''l'Ordre national du Québec'', and in English abbreviation as the Order of Quebec, is an order of merit in the Canadian province of Quebec. Instituted in 1984 when Lieutenant Gove ...
. He is now a member of the
Strategic Management Society The Strategic Management Society (SMS) is a professional society for the advancement of strategic management. The society consists of nearly 3,000 members representing various backgrounds and perspectives from more than eighty different countries. ...
. In 2004, he published a book entitled ''Managers Not MBAs'' which outlines what he believes to be wrong with management education today. Mintzberg claims that prestigious graduate management schools like
Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...
and the
Wharton Business School The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania ( ; also known as Wharton Business School, the Wharton School, Penn Wharton, and Wharton) is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in P ...
at the
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
are obsessed with numbers and that their overzealous attempts to make management a science are damaging the discipline of management. Mintzberg advocates more emphasis on post graduate programs that educate practicing managers (rather than students with little real world experience) by relying upon action learning and insights from their own problems and experiences. Mintzberg has twice won the
McKinsey McKinsey & Company is a global management consulting firm founded in 1926 by University of Chicago professor James O. McKinsey, that offers professional services to corporations, governments, and other organizations. McKinsey is the oldest and ...
Award for publishing the best article in the ''
Harvard Business Review ''Harvard Business Review'' (''HBR'') is a general management magazine published by Harvard Business Publishing, a wholly owned subsidiary of Harvard University. ''HBR'' is published six times a year and is headquartered in Brighton, Massach ...
'' (despite his critical stance about the strategy consulting business). He is also credited with co-creating the
organigraph An organigraph is a graphical representation of a company's structure or processes. It is used as an alternative to a traditional organizational chart as it does not imply the same degree of linear hierarchy that an organizational chart does. Orga ...
, which is taught in business schools. From 1991 to 1999, he was a visiting professor at
INSEAD INSEAD, a contraction of "Institut Européen d'Administration des Affaires" () is a non-profit business school that maintains campuses in Europe ( Fontainebleau, France), Asia (Singapore), the Middle East (Abu Dhabi, UAE), and North America (San ...
. Mintzberg writes on the topics of management and business strategy, with more than 150 articles and fifteen books to his name. His seminal book, ''The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning'', criticizes some of the practices of strategic planning today. Mintzberg runs two programs at the
Desautels Faculty of Management The Desautels Faculty of Management is a faculty of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The faculty offers a range of undergraduate and graduate-level business programs, including the Bachelor of Commerce, Master of Business Adminis ...
which have been designed to teach his alternative approach to management and strategic planning: the International Masters in Practicing Management (IMPM) in association with the McGill Executive Institute and the International Masters for Health Leadership (IMHL). With Phil LeNir, he owns Coaching Ourselves International, a private company using his alternative approach for management development directly in the workplace.


Contribution to organization theory

The organizational configurations framework of Mintzberg is a model that describes six valid organizational configurations (originally only five; the sixth one was added later): Robertas Jucevičius "Strateginis organizacijų vystymas", "Pasaulio lietuvių kultūros, mokslo ir švietimo centras", 1998, , p. 81-92 # Simple structure, characteristic of entrepreneurial organization # Machine bureaucracy # Professional bureaucracy # Diversified form #
Adhocracy Adhocracy is a flexible, adaptable and informal form of organization that is defined by a lack of formal structure that employs specialized multidisciplinary teams grouped by functions. It operates in an opposite fashion to a bureaucracy. The ter ...
, or innovative organization Regarding the coordination between different tasks, Mintzberg defines the following mechanisms: # ''Mutual adjustment'', which achieves coordination by the simple process of informal communication (as between two operating employees) # ''Direct supervision'' is achieved by having one person issue orders or instructions to several others whose work interrelates (as when a boss tells others what is to be done, one step at a time) # ''Standardization of work processes'', which achieves coordination by specifying the work processes of people carrying out interrelated tasks (those standards usually being developed in the technostructure to be carried out in the operating core, as in the case of the work instructions that come out of time-and-motion studies) # ''Standardization of outputs'', which achieves coordination by specifying the results of different work (again usually developed in the technostructure, as in a financial plan that specifies subunit performance targets or specifications that outline the dimensions of a product to be produced) # ''Standardization of skills'' (as well as knowledge), in which different work is coordinated by virtue of the related training the workers have received (as in medical specialists—say a surgeon and an anesthetist in an operating room—responding almost automatically to each other's standardized procedures) # ''Standardization of norms'', in which it is the norms infusing the work that are controlled, usually for the entire organization, so that everyone functions according to the same set of beliefs (as in a religious order) According to the organizational configurations model of Mintzberg, each organization can consist of a maximum of six basic parts: # Strategic apex (top management) # Middle line (middle management) # Operating core (operations, operational processes) # Technostructure (analysts that design systems, processes, etc.) # Support staff (support outside of operating workflow) # Ideology (halo of beliefs and traditions; norms, values, culture)


Contribution to business strategy theory

Perhaps the most distinctive feature of Mintzberg's research findings and writing on business strategy, is that they have often emphasized the importance of emergent strategy, which arises informally at any level in an organisation, as an alternative or a complement to deliberate strategy, which is determined consciously either by top management or with the acquiescence of top management. He has been strongly critical of the stream of strategy literature which focuses predominantly on deliberate strategy.


Bibliography

* ''The Nature of Managerial Work'' (1973), Harper & Row. * ''The Structuring of Organizations: A Synthesis of the Research'' (1979), Prentice-Hall. * ''Power in and Around Organizations'' (1983), Prentice-Hall; . * ''Structure in Fives: Designing Effective'' (1983), Prentice-Hall; . * ''Mintzberg on Management: Inside Our Strange World of Organizations'' (1989), Simon and Schuster; . * * ''Why I Hate Flying: Tales for the Tormented Traveler'' (2001), Texere;. * ''Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour Through The Wilds of Strategic Management'' (with Bruce Ahlstrand; Joseph Lampel, 2005), Simon and Schuster; . * * ''Tracking Strategies: Toward a General Theory'' (2007), OUP Oxford; . * ''Managing'' (2009), Berrett-Koehler Publishers; . * ''Simply Managing: What Managers Do — and Can Do Better'' (2013), Berrett-Koehler Publishers; . * ''Management? It's Not What You Think!'' (2013), Pearson UK; . * ''Strategy Bites Back'' (2013), Pearson UK; . * ''Rebalancing Society: Radical Renewal Beyond Left, Right, and Center'' (2014), Berrett-Koehler Publishers; . * ''Managing the Myths of Health Care: Bridging the Separations between Care, Cure, Control, and Community'' (2017), Berrett-Koehler Publishers; . * ''Bedtime Stories for Managers: Farewell to Lofty Leadership. . . Welcome Engaging Management'' (2019), Berrett-Koehler Publishers; .


Notes


External links

*
audio
of 2015 CBC interview (with Michael Enright) regarding Mintzberg's 2014 boo
Rebalancing Society
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mintzberg, Henry 1939 births Living people Canadian business theorists Jewish Canadian writers McGill University Faculty of Engineering alumni MIT Sloan School of Management alumni McGill University faculty INSEAD faculty Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada Officers of the National Order of Quebec Officers of the Order of Canada Writers from Montreal Anglophone Quebec people Management & Organization scholars National University of San Marcos faculty