Mintzberg is equally famous in academia and industry. It can be said that he is a household name in management-related research, teaching, consulting and practice communities. He is known to both young and old. He has profoundly influenced several generations. people. This is relatively rare even among scholars in the field of strategic management, which is said to be more practical.
In the scientific community, there is a saying: We only believe in God, and others must show the data first before speaking. Of course, unless you are a so-called Guru like Drucker, what you say itself will be regarded as truth by all living beings, without resorting to data at all. It can be said that Mintzberg belongs to Drucker-level guru.
However, no one regards Guru Drucker as a scholar, and he does not need to be involved in academic circles, so there is no need to speak with data. But many people genuinely regard Mintzberg as an academic hero. In academic circles, especially the increasingly scientific management research community, it is even more valuable to insist on not talking about so-called data.
It’s not that he is technically incompetent and can’t play with data. But he deliberately didn't play. Just like in the movie A Bronx Tale starring Robert De Niro, a child admiringly describes how awesome a gang boss is when he speaks (gestures): He's got five fingers, and he only uses three! If you have energy but don't use it, that's What a blast.
Mintzberg studied mechanical engineering as an undergraduate at McGill. The mathematical foundation and ability will definitely not be much worse. But what betrays his engineering background is only the model diagrams or flow charts drawn when presenting certain classification methods (such as organizational structure). After reading so many of his books and papers, I have never seen any data or statistics.
Just by looking at his writing, you would think he graduated from the English Department, eloquent and engaging. However, after graduating from his undergraduate degree in 1961, he did get a bachelor's degree in General Arts from Concordia University through night classes the following year. It seems that it is still very artistic.
He has field investigation, case presentation, story outline, logical inference, rationale explanation, and is self-contained. In 1986, there was a series of articles in CMR (California Management Review) analyzing "The Honda Effect" written by Richard Pascal from various angles based on his field trip to Japan to interview several Honda executives responsible for entering the U.S. motorcycle market in the 1960s. The story mainly illustrates that strategy is based on luck rather than strategizing in advance.
Mintzberg claimed that the Honda Effect is the only known fact in the entire management field for so many years. An in-depth case tells the wonderful behind-the-scenes story that BCG cannot see through rational analysis (market share, economies of scale, experience curve), and the truth behind the story. The data itself is not fact, no matter how large the sample is.
Usual data processing data dredging is the so-called garbage in, garbage out. Or just be like economists and just proof and play with mathematical models without any evidence. Coincidentally, Herb Simon, a generational decision-making guru, once said, a sample of one is better than none! In this sense, the model of the highest achievements in Chinese social sciences should still be Fei Xiaotong's "Jiangcun Economy".
Mintzberg often said that if the effect size of the problem you are studying is large enough, you only need to simply plot the data, and everything will be clear, and there is no need for so many sophisticated statistical methods.
This is indeed the case. If you are studying management issues, your Delta R-Square is only at the 0.02 (Plt; 0.01) level, which is basically meaningless. More random than random walk.
If you look at the foot traffic changes of KFC outside the west gate of Peking University, and then use it to predict the total number of doctoral students admitted to the Ivy League this year by Peking University, it is estimated to be significantly higher than this, not to mention the transaction costs. Explain why the monkey climbed the tree.
Many empirical results can be obtained, that is, there are a large number of 0s in the data. In addition, it is to torture the data. Brothers Dave Jemison and James Fredrickson were both from Washington, and both took a statistics class from a teacher named John Chiu. When I was studying in Texas, I heard the same famous quote by John Chiu in their classes: If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to everything!
I saw that there were Chinese scholars in In the 1980s, for the same data sample, if you change n, you can publish N articles with different or even opposite conclusions. N is greater than or equal to 2. Therefore, I am naturally suspicious of all imperial stuff, especially those made by Chinese and Koreans.
That’s too far. Take it back.
In 1968, Mintzberg obtained a Ph.D. from MIT Sloan School, majoring in strategy (Policy) and having a side job in Political Science. So far, there are more than ten honorary doctorates. Won numerous awards. In short, Mintzberg's main research can be divided into three areas, the role of the general manager, the strategic management process, organizational structure and power and politics.
In the 1980s, the first thing I came into contact with was Mintzberg’s early work, based on The Nature of Managerial Work (1973) published by his doctoral thesis. At that time, there was a Chinese translation of "The Nature of Management Work", which was included in a series of foreign management masterpieces edited by Ma Hong, director of the Institute of Industrial Economics of the Academy of Social Sciences and later director-general of the Development Research Center of the State Council.
Apparently, it took Mintzberg five years to publish the book, and it is said that initially no publishers were interested. This book adopts the research method of cultural anthropology and relies on in-depth field studies of five managers. It mainly outlines the 10 roles and work characteristics of managers. In 1975, its core content was published in HBR and won the McKinsey Best Paper Award that year. Since then, his reputation has grown.
The 1979 The Structuring of Organizations mainly talks about the taxonomy of organizational structure, involving multiple elements such as the organization’s task environment, technical characteristics, and operational processes.
Power in and Around Organizations in 1983 mainly explains the power and political process in organizations. Mintzberg was perhaps the first scholar in the entire management field to admit the positive (negative) impact of organizational politics. He outlined in detail the categories and characteristics of various political games, and interpreted the acquisition and application of organizational power. His research in this area echoes and is comparable to that of Jeff Pfeffer.
Of course, Mintzberg's most famous contribution in the field of strategic management is his research on the strategic process, especially the research on the so-called emergent strategy.
His Structure of Unstructured Decision Processes, ASQ, 1976; Patterns of Strategy Formation, MS, 1978, Of Strategies, Deliberate and Emergent, SMJ, 1985; Crafting Strategy, HBR, 1987, Five Ps of Strategy, CMR, 1987, etc. This series of articles thoroughly explains the spontaneous or breeding process of strategy.
Strategy is not formulated, but formed. This was also his stance and confidence in his quarrel with Ansoff. I totally agree with Mintzberg's work on this. Usually, strategy is a consistent pattern summarized through retrospective rationalization, either by the parties themselves or by onlookers.
Such a contribution is enough to compete with all strategic theories based on rational assumptions. In 1994, Mintzberg published The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, which summarized the vigorous but basically going nowhere strategic planning movement, although he called himself critical but ended with a positive note.
Mintzberg’s contribution is in line with Herb Simon’s hypothesis of bounded rationality and echoes the strategic logic incrementalism of another pioneer, James Brian Quinn. They had so much in common that they later co-edited an anthology as a textbook on strategic process research.
The 1998 Strategy Safari summarized the various schools and perspectives of strategic management. It is similar to the jungle of management theories summarized by Koontz in the 1960s and 1970s. Perhaps this is the Mintzberg work that Chinese readers are most familiar with. Moreover, Chinese people also like things related to dividing genres and categories very much. By this time Mintzberg was already famous all over the world. There is no need to use a paper to speak. Basically every book can cause varying degrees of buzz and bestsellers.
Of course, academic heroes in business schools will inevitably praise and criticize MBA education. At the turn of the century, many scholars such as Jeff Pfeffer, Warren Bennis, Sumantra Ghoshal, and Henry Mintzberg called attention to the shortcomings of current MBA education. We must have a humanistic spirit, have social responsibility, and not be mercenary. We must not only focus on the technical hard courses of management but ignore the construction of soft power such as leadership. . . Therefore, in 2004, Mintzberg published the book Managers, Not MBAs. What we need are managers, not MBAs!
I briefly read the book at that time, and it was basically two sentences. First, the current mainstream Western MBA education system has trained a group of wrong people with the wrong methods and wrong content at the wrong time and in the wrong place. All wrong! What to do? The second sentence is on-the-job training. IMPM, International Masters in Practicing Management. Emphasis on practice, on-site teaching, and on-the-job training. In short, classes cannot be held in a regular format. Mintzberg, in addition to his lifelong presence at McGill in Montreal, also visited INSEAD for an extended period in the 1990s. Xiao Zhixing studied for a PhD there and had in-depth contact with him and wrote about IMPM and Mintzberg himself.
Like all the big guys, from Porter to Prahalad, the academic big guys who are interested in social impact outside the academic circle are ultimately concerned about social issues: the bottom of the pyramid, the medical industry, National development, to name a few. Mintzberg's latest book is Balancing Society, which means that regardless of left, center or right, don't go to extremes.
A star is always a star. In the words of the stage, you stand in the middle. You have to stand in the middle wherever you go. During a meeting at AOM more than ten years ago, Mintzberg, who arrived late, happened to sit next to me. Brain Ben'er is really amazing!
The people on the stage were speaking and talking. Just watch old Henry eager to comment and add. Although he is not obviously gearing up, you can really feel the aura of standing in the middle.
It seems that it was in that comment that he loudly declared that management cannot be polluted by economics. Every management scholar must start with himself. For a starter, that means, in faculty club, never dine with an economist at the same table!
This is the style of everyone in management! Marshal also.