Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development eBook: Henry Mintzberg: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Review

"Managers Not MBAs adds an extra spark to the debate."
The Guardian, February 2005
"Managers Not MBAs throws a stone into the often complacent world of management education. It should be required reading for anyone who has the qualification, who wants one, or just wanders what all the fuss is about."
The Economist
"Managers not MBAs goes beyond polemic. The book is also a rousing manifesto for the thoroughgoing reform of management education and how we think about it." Michael Skapinker, Management Editor, Financial Times

"This book offers profound thoughts on management education and development. It should be recommended reading for MBA students and faculties. It will excite and exasperate readers, but it will never bore them."

Management Today

“In this provocative work [Mintzberg] challenges the very basics of business education.” Business Week

"... a powerful statement and a terrific read. Mintzberg is a fine writer with a caustic turn of phrase and to make his case he draws on inside knowledge, both as a member of the academy ... and a distinguished strategy researcher in his own right." The Observer

"Henry Mintzberg is that rare thing, a humane business school academic. For three decades he has been debunking some of the most corrosive myths about management, and doing so in a style that is both sophisticated and uplifting.

This important book fundamentally challenges many of today's orthodoxies about how businesses should be run. He might just be able to save us all from ourselves." Accounting & Business Magazine

“In Managers Not MBAs, Mintzberg offers a new definition of management as a blend of craft (experience), art (insight), and science (analysis). An education that overemphasizes science encourages a style of managing the author calls "calculating," or if the graduates believe themselves to be artists, the related style "heroic." According to the book, neither heroes nor technocrats in positions of influence are useful - what's really needed are balanced, dedicated people who practice a style that can be called "engaging." Such people believe their purpose is to leave behind stronger organizations, not just higher share prices. Managers Not MBAs explains in detail how to cultivate such managers, and how they can transform the business world and, ultimately, society.”

Institute of Management Studies, Book of the Month, June

"When it comes to management, Mintzberg’s opinion matters: for thirty years he has been one of the foremost, and certainly one of the most radical, thinkers and writers on the subject."

People Management, August 2004

"One of the world’s most respected management gurus finally squares up to demolish one of the most sacred cows of business education … This book should make a lasting contribution to the evolution of management education.”
Director, June 2004

Product Description

In his new book, Henry Mintzberg offers a sweeping critique of how managers are educated and how management, as a result, is practiced, and makes thoughtful-and controversial-recommendations for reforming both. Management, Mintzberg writes, is a practice that blends a great deal of craft (experience) with a certain amount of art (insight) and some science (analysis). Because conventional MBA programs are designed almost exclusively for young people with little if any managerial experience, and hence little art and no craft to draw upon, the programs overemphasize science, in the form of analysis and technique. Graduates leave with a distorted impression that management consists entirely of applying formulas to situations, which has had a corrupting, dehumanizing effect not just on the practice of management, but also on our organizations and our social institutions. Turning to how managers should be developed, Mintzberg describes in detail a set of innovative programs designed to address these shortcomings that he and a group of colleagues have put into practice: the International Masters in Practicing Management (IMPM). Finally, he outlines how business schools can transform themselves to become true schools of management. Managers Not MBAs presents the kind of bold, iconoclastic thinking readers have come to expect from the man Fast Company magazine called "one of the most original minds in management."

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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful

Mintzberg still at the cutting edge of managment thinking 2 July 2004

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

As Mintzberg so rightly points out in the introduction, "This is a book about management education that is about management. I believe that both are deeply troubled, but neither can be changed without the other."

This sets the scene for another excellent book by Mintzberg where he explores what's gone wrong with MBAs and management and how he believes it can be changed. Throughout the book Mintzberg uses solid examples which make you question the meaning of a "good MBA" - anyone thinking of doing an MBA from a top business school should first see the table on page 115, which shows the performance of Harvard's supposed "best" graduates. Very interesting to say the least!

I found myself nodding in agreement throughout this book as well as questioning management behaviour that I observe around me every day. This is an invaluable read for anyone, such as me, thinking of doing an MBA and anyone who is in management or has done an MBA and wants to know how to put their management education into action. It's also a must read for anyone involved in management education.

Mintzberg has once again written a book that will shape the future of management thinking. Miss this book at your own peril!

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

Good analysis of the current state 13 Sep 2009

By Stephen Parry

Excellent description covering all that is wrong with current management thinking and the education system that produces it. He does offer a different education approach which makes logical sense, but we are not dealing with a world that thinks logically only functionally.

The unanswered question for me is simply this, what do we do while we wait for the better educated manager to arrive on the scene? - the book is not designed to answer this question but it does provide hope that one-day a new cadre of management will arrive but it will not be any time soon. In the meantime those of us who already think the way Mintzberg does have to continue to fight the good fight. Perhaps we need to wait another generation or more before the old world thinkers die out and leave the field to the new thinkers.

This book at least holds out the hope that new managers will not follow their predecessors and will possess a systems thinking approach, demonstrate high critical thinking skills and apply scientific thinking instead of management fads and dogmas.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful

Pact With Knowledge! 13 Oct 2004

By Rolf Dobelli TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

Arrogant, greedy, impatient, inexperienced, out of touch with the real world, overpaid, overeducated and overseeing you - does that sound like an apt description of MBAs? Author Henry Mintzberg would answer with a stentorian "yes!" He marshals a powerful array of facts to support his thesis that graduate schools of business have perpetrated one of the most successful con jobs in history. They have pretended that the bright young things they send into a hungry market as MBAs are, in fact, trained professional managers with a rare grasp of management science. Management, says Mintzberg, is not a science, nor is it a profession. It is not something someone can learn to do in a business school. It is something one only learns by doing, and no one in a business school does any doing. After delivering what ought to be a fatal blow to the pretensions of MBAs and those who educate them, the author proposes a proven alternative. He is not so na�ve as to believe that the facts he provides will change the world. Powerful economic interests now have a real stake in the status quo. But he hopes for change and provides plenty of ammunition. We suggest this book to those with a passionate interest in business education, pro or con.