Myth Of The Well Educated Manager

Managers Not MBAs

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.” 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.

Teaching and the Case Method

This third edition of Teaching and the Case Method is a further response to increased national and international interest in teaching, teachers, and learning, as well as the pressing need to enhance instructional effectiveness in the widest possible variety of settings. Like its predecessors, this edition celebrates the joys of teaching and learning at their best and emphasizes the reciprocal exchange of wisdom that teachers and students can experience. It is based on the belief that teaching is not purely a matter of inborn talent. On the contrary, the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that make for excellence in teaching can be analyzed, abstracted, and learned. One key premise of Teaching and the Case Method is that all teaching and learning involve a core of universally applicable principles that can be discerned and absorbed through the study and discussion of cases.

Myth of the Well-Educated Manager