A Conversation with Henry Mintzberg

Abstract

Henry Mintzberg is both Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and professor of organization at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. His research deals with issues of general management and organizations; his current focus is on the nature and styles of managerial work, as well as forms of organizing and on the strategy formation process. He also heads up a team of people from five universities around the world, a group working to establish what they hope will be “next generation management education”—specifically, a master's program aimed at the “development in context” of practicing managers. His own teaching activities focus on ad hoc seminars for experienced managers and work with doctoral students. Over the years, he has worked with a number of substantial family firms and contributed to a film about a patriarchal Canadian grocery family enterprise, Steinberg's. Mintzberg received his doctorate and master of science degrees from MIT's Sloan School of Management and his mechanical engineering degree from McGill. Mintzberg is the author of the Nature of Managerial Work (1973), The Structuring of Organizations (1983), The Strategy Process (a textbook with James Brian Quinn, now in its third edition), Mintzberg on Management (1989), The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning (1994), and the Canadian Condition: Reflections of a “Pure Cotton ” (1995). He has written about a hundred articles, including two Harvard Business Review McKinsey prize winners, “The Manager's Job: Folklore and Fact” and “Crafting Strategy.” FBR talked to Mintzberg about planning, collaboration, boards, governance and his new management program.