Managers Not MBAs

According to Mintzberg, management education is really business education, offering specialized training in the functions of business rather than general education in the practice of managing. As a result, thousands of MBAs converge on the business world, with little firsthand knowledge of customers, workers, products, or processes, but are expected to “lead” those who have indeed gained that knowledge in the only way possible—through personal experience.

Managers Not MBAs, thus, offers thoughtful developers, educators, managers, and interested observers, including MBA applicants, students, and graduates, Mintzberg’s serious critique of the MBA process and its distortion of managerial practice. Moving from the critical to the constructive, it also describes the International Masters Program in Practicing Management (IMPM), a family of innovative programs, developed by the author and a team of colleagues, to show experienced managers the way toward “authentic management education.” And, it outlines a set of principles by which business schools can reconceive themselves and become “true schools of management.”