Managing

One of our most distinguished scholars offers a bold new view of the theory and practice of effective management Named one of the best management books of 2009 by strategy+business magazine, the Toronto Globe, and Mail and Library Journal Winner of the Axiom gold medal in the leadership category

front and center.

To gain an accurate picture of management as practiced rather than management as preached, Mintzberg watched twenty-nine different managers work a typical day. They came from business, government, and nonprofits, from all sorts of industries, including banking, policing, filmmaking, aircraft production, retailing, and health care, and worked in diverse settings ranging from a refugee camp to a symphony orchestra. These observations form the empirical basis for this book.

not a list of tasks but a dynamic process in which managers accomplish their purpose working through information, through people, and, more rarely, through direct action. Mintzberg describes the various roles managers adopt to function on these three planes, emphasizing that they must work on all of three simultaneously, determining the balance best suited to their specific, unique situation. Which is why management, Mitzberg insists, is not a profession-"it is a practice" he writes, "learned primarily through experience, and rooted in context."

Having established the nature of modern management, Mintzberg looks at the varieties of managing experience. He identifies twelve factors that influence managing, highlighting the ones that are truly important (not necessarily the ones you'd think) and offers an illuminating typology of different approaches to management-what he calls postures of managing. He provides insightful ways of dealing with some of the most vexing conundrums managers face, and ultimately pulls everything together to offer a comprehensive picture of true managerial effectiveness-an approach he calls "engaged management."

provocative, irreverent, carefully researched, myth-busting. It is the most authoritative and revealing book yet written about what managers do, how they do it, and how they can have the greatest impact.