Henry mintzberg

Henry Mintzberg (born in Montreal, August 26, 1939) is an internationally recognized academic professor and author of several business and management publications. Today, he is the Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University in Canada, where he has taught since 1968, after earning his BA in Management and Ph.D. from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1965 and 1968 respectively. He also received honor awards in 1968 at his graduation.

Activity

In The Nature of Managerial Work (1974), he set out to contrast the reality of managerial work with the business theory that was taught at the time. Mintzberg, one of the greatest iconoclasts of business strategy, concluded that "far from orderly, focused, and linear work, the daily work of efficient managers involved managing chaotic, unpredictable, and disorderly situations, where it is not easy to distinguish what is wrong." trivial to the essential. In reality, the job of a manager involves adopting different roles in different situations, to bring some degree of order to the chaos that naturally reigns in human organizations.

The book was a frontal attack on the planning strategy developed until then by authors such as Ansoff or consultants such as McKinsey. In addition, he gave preponderance to creativity and intuition of the strategy, placing them far above the rational and analytical process.

In The Structuring of Organizations (1985) and in Design of Effective Organizations (2000) the Canadian author identified the essential components of an organization:

• Strategic Summit
• Medium line
• Operating core
• Tecnostructure
• Support structure

And he cited as coordination mechanisms:

• Mutual adjustment
• Direct oversight
• Standardization of Processes
• Standardization of Results
• Standardization of Skills

In the first part of The Strategic Process (1993), Mintzberg defines strategy, the strategist, and the strategy planning process. In the second and third parts he continues to deal with the fundamentals and the formation of strategists. In the fourth part he concludes with several case studies: Sony, Microsoft, IBM and others.

Later, Mintzberg discussed the decline of strategic planning in one of his best-known works, The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning (1994), in which he identifies three false premises or fallacies of strategic planning. strategic planning:

• Prediction fallacy: the future environment cannot be predicted, as it is impossible to predict the behavior of competitors.
• The fallacy of independence: the formulation of the strategy cannot be separated from the management process; a planning department cannot capture all the information necessary for strategic formulation. Nor should it be a formal periodic process, but it is a dynamic process.
• Lack of formalization: formal strategic planning procedures are insufficient to address the constant changes in the environment. To this end, organizations need informal systems and should promote learning by bringing together thought and action.

Previously Frisknetcht^[who?] had already stated that approach and strategy were completely different dimensions.^{[citation needed]}

In Safari to Strategy (1999) he identifies and critiques the top 10 schools of strategic thought at his discretion.

In his book Managers, not MBAs (2005), he criticizes the training of managers trained through the postgraduate study of the Master of Business Administration (in English: Master in Business & Administration, abbreviated MBA), generally taken by young people with no experience, too oriented to numbers and results who tend to neglect team management. According to Mintzberg, a manager cannot be created in a classroom. Instead, he proposes experience and contact with other managers as the most direct way to polish a good manager.

According to Mintzberg, good managers have three characteristics: vision, experience and science. By focusing only on science, you work incompletely. It also suggests that a new master's program, targeting managers in work practice (as opposed to young students with little real-world experience), and emphasizing practical subjects, may be more suitable.^{[citation needed]}

Professor Mintzberg points to prestigious graduate management schools such as Harvard Business School and the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania as examples of how an obsession with numbers and a zealous attempt to make business management only a science, can harm the discipline of management.

In Strategy Bites Back (2005) Mintzberg attacks the lack of spontaneity of classical strategic planning, arguing that if it weren't inspiring, it wouldn't really be strategy. In his own words, the book takes on different voices that have something "sharp" about them. to say about strategy, like those of Michael Porter, Peter Drucker or Jack Welch.

His latest published book is Tracking Strategies, Towards a General Theory (2007), where he attempts to explain deliberate or forced strategy changes. In the introductory chapter, he revisits the concept of strategy. In the next ten chapters he analyzes the strategies of organizations over extended periods of time, in some cases up to 150 years, through the use of case studies. These include businesses, governments, universities, and individuals.

Many scholars of business strategy argue that Mintzberg is only capable of destructive criticism without providing any alternative model. Despite his sharp criticism of business schools and strategic consultancies, he has won two awards from McKinsey (one of the world's leading strategic consultancies), published by the Harvard Business School (one of the world's leading business schools). Which is ironic and reflects the author's own contradictions.

Strategic planning was seriously affected by Mintzberg's The Nature of Managerial Work in the 1970s, and the suppression of the entire strategic planning department at General Electric in the 1980s (200 people), which starred newcomer CEO Jack Welch. Only with the arrival of Michael Porter with Competitive Strategy (1980) and Competitive Advantage (1985) did strategic planning re-emerge with great force.

Miscellaneous

Ironically, while Professor Mintzberg is somewhat critical of the strategy consulting business, he has twice won the McKinsey Award for best article in the Harvard Business Review.

In 1997 he was awarded an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 1998 he was decorated as an Officer of the National Order of Quebec.

He is married to Sasha Sadilova, of Czech origin, and they have two daughters, Susie and Lisa.

Work

• 2012 Structure of the organizations
• 2009. Managing
• 2007. Tracking Strategies: Towards a General Theory of Strategy Formation
• 2005. Strategy Bites back
• 2004. Managers not MBAs (Mintzberg, 2004)
• 2000a. Managing Publiclywith Jacques Bourgault
• 2000b. Why I Hate Flying
• 1998a. Strategy Safariwith Bruce Ahlstrand & Joe Lampel
• 1998b. The Strategy Processwith James Brian Quinn and Sumantra Ghoshal
• 1995. The Canadian Condition: Reflections of a "pure cotton"
• 1994. The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning: Reconceiving Roles for Planning
• 1983. Structure in Fives: Designing Effective Organizations
• 1989. Mintzberg on Management: Inside Our Strange World of Organizations
• 1984. Organizations: A Quantum ViewFor Danny Miller & Peter Friesen. Written with the collaboration of Mintzberg, who wrote chapter 1, "The Case for Configuration", and chapter 3, "A Typology of Organizational Structure".
• 1984. Tracking Strategies in the Birthplace of Canadian Tycoons: The Sherbrooke Record 1946-1976
• 1983. Beyond Method: Strategies for Social Researchby Gareth Morgan
• 1983. Power in and Around Organizations
• 1979. The Structuring of Organizations: A Synthesis of the Research
• 1977. Clues to Executive Time Control: The Manager - Puppet or Conductor?
• 1975. Impediments to the Use of Management Information
• 1975. The Structure of Strategic Decision Processeswith Raisinghani " Theoret "
• 1973. The Nature of Managerial Work