Henry Mintzberg Scholar and writer in business and management Date of Birth: 02.09.1939 Country: USA

Biography of Henry Mintzberg

Henry Mintzberg is a renowned scholar and writer in the field of business and management. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada (O.C.), an Officer of the National Order of Quebec, and a member of the Royal Society of Canada. Mintzberg was born on September 2, 1939, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and grew up in an ordinary, fairly affluent family. His father owned and managed a small but successful company specializing in women's dresses. As a young boy, Mintzberg would often ask his father about what he did at the office, but he claims it was just his curiosity as a child.

After finishing school, Mintzberg enrolled in McGill University and earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. Although he wanted to study production organization, the university did not offer such a program. After university, Mintzberg realized that he did not want to work in his father's company and decided to pursue something entirely his own. He got his first job in 1961 at the Canadian National Railway thanks to his position as the sports editor in the university newspaper - the person who hired him was also very interested in football.

Currently, Professor Mintzberg teaches at the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University. He started teaching in 1968 after earning a master's degree in management in 1965 and a doctorate from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1968. His uncle, Jack Mintzberg, who had faith in his nephew's ability to pursue an academic career, inspired him to further his education in the United States.

From 1991 to 1999, Mintzberg served as a visiting professor at INSEAD, one of the top business schools in the world, which has campuses in Fontainebleau near Paris, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi. Mintzberg is married for the second time to Sasha Sadilova, and he has two daughters, Susie and Lisa, from his first marriage. He prefers to keep his private life out of the media's attention and advises his students to do the same.

Mintzberg is an incredibly prolific author, writing about business management and strategy development. He has published over 150 articles and 15 books, some of which have become essential textbooks for students studying management worldwide. His most famous book, "The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning," published in 1994, criticizes some of the commonly accepted practices of modern strategic planning. In 2004, he released the book "Managers Not MBAs," in which he argues that he believes contemporary management education is heading in the wrong direction. He also believes that graduates of prestigious business schools like Harvard and Wharton are obsessed with numbers, and their attempts to turn management into a science (which Mintzberg considers an art) are causing irreparable damage to the discipline. Mintzberg supports teaching managers who already have work experience rather than students who have no idea what they will face in the real business world.

Ironically, although Professor Mintzberg consistently criticizes modern business consulting, he has twice won the McKinsey Award from the international consulting firm McKinsey & Company for the best article published in the Harvard Business Review.