Product Description

"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, Managment Editor, Financial Times

Fast Company

called Henry Mintzberg "one of the most original minds in management."

The Financial Times website ranked him the 7^th top management thinker in the world.

Tom Peters named his book The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning "my favorite management book in the last 25 years… no contest."

Now, in this sweeping critique of how managers are educated and how, as a consequence, management is practiced, Henry Mintzberg offers thoughtful and controversial ideas for reforming both.

"The MBA trains the wrong people in the wrong ways with the wrong consequences." Mintzberg writes. "Using the classroom to help develop people already practicing management is a fine idea, but pretending to create managers out of people who have never managed is a sham."

Because conventional MBA programs are designed for people without managerial experience, they overemphasize analysis and denigrate experience. That leaves a distorted impression of management, which has had a corrupting influence on its practice.

Leaders cannot be created in a classroom. They arise in context. But people who already practice management can significantly improve their effectiveness given the opportunity to learn thoughtfully from their own experience.

Mintzberg calls for a more engaging approach to managing and a more reflective approach to management education. He also outlines how business schools can become true schools of management.

"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

"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

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #248027 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 480 pages

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

From the Back Cover

A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development

Fast Company called Henry Mintzberg “one of the most original minds in management.”

Tom Peters named his book The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning "my favorite management book in the last 25 years… no contest.”

Now, in this sweeping critique of how managers are educated and how, as a consequence, management is practiced, Henry Mintzberg offers thoughtful and controversial ideas for reforming both.

“The MBA trains the wrong people in the wrong ways with the wrong consequences” Mintzberg writes. “Using the classroom to help develop people already practicing management is a fine idea, but pretending to create managers out of people who have never managed is a sham.”

Because conventional MBA programs are designed for people without managerial experience, they overemphasize analysis and denigrate experience. That leaves a distorted impression of management, which has had a corrupting influence on its practice.

Leaders cannot be created in a classroom. They arise in context. But people who already practice management can significantly improve their effectiveness given the opportunity to learn thoughtfully from their own experience.

Mintzberg calls for a more engaging approach to managing and a more reflective approach to management education. He also outlines how business schools can become true schools of management.

"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, Managment Editor, Financial Times

Customer Reviews

Mintzberg still at the cutting edge of managment thinking
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!

Pact With Knowledge!
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 naïve 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.

Not relevant to European MBAs
Mintzberg talks of the USA system, where graduates from university go straight to do an MBA - but in Europe that doesn't happen.

He says MBAs are not taight management skills - yet my MBA course at CASS business school taught HR mmanagement, organizational behvaiour, information amanegemtn amongst many others

He says MBAs are taught to try to be stratgic "heros", yet we were taught that mergers and Acquisitions destroy value and diversification for the sake of it is not clever at all.

He says MBAs don't have previous management experience - yet my class had 100 people in with a total of 500 years of management experience and more.

Someone told me after an article about this that Professor Mintzberg (An academic heor of mine by the way - I love his strategy book) is opening an "alternative" business school. I'm not sure if it's true but if it is then this book is merely marketing for that.

We need MBAs to be hired in the UK for the positive aspects of what they are taught - instead, they won't get hired as people will read this book. We are being taught in Europe to be the kind of MBA graduates that Mintzberg wants - yet because of him we may not get the chance to prove it - a shame.