On 18th and 25th of April, at the invitation of China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) and the CEO & CIO China magazine, one of the world's leading management thinkers, Prof. Henry Mintzberg delivered a speech, "Where Is Management Going?" at "Interpreting Management Guru" forums in Shanghai and Beijing. He discussed the topics on management enhancement for meeting current competition in globalisation with participants of the forum made up mainly of Chinese business leaders.

Mintzberg is one of the leading management thinkers in the world. Since the 1970's, he has made three influential contributions to the field of management including research on managerial roles, strategy processes, and the education of practicing management. He is the founder and former president of Strategy Management Society, and also the founder and former director of Informational Masters Programme in Practicing Management. The CEO & CIO China magazine began introducing Mintzberg's ideas in its column "Interpreting Management Gurus" in 2003, which has been warmly welcomed by the audience.

The forum has gathered over 400 influential business executives including many CEOs, famous scholars from leading business schools, reporters from well-known finance media and websites. It is a platform for dissemination of practice-orientated management ideas and for an exchange between academicians and practitioners.

Mintzberg's work has focused on the study of how managers work. He believes that management styles can be divided into three types: the artist's, the scientist's and the craftman's. He explains that it is unfortunate how current MBA education is focused on maximization of shareholders' profits, so it is more of the scientist's style. However Mintzberg advocates that a manager must learn to balance among all the three styles, making management more humane and flatter.

Mintzberg is internationally recognised for his rigorous and practice-oriented research. No matter "the nature of managerial work", "strategy as craft" or "management education across functional border", all are conclusions drawn from his scrupulous study on business realities. This explains why his theories are more accurate, direct and enlightening than other popular ones in many occasions. Through the dialogue with Mintzberg, Chinese business executives can have a deeper understanding of his ideas, which can greatly benefit their business operations.

CEIBS was the organiser of this forum. As an academic institution, CEIBS is regarded as creating and disseminating knowledge as one of its top tasks. CEIBS is a non-profit joint venture established in 1994 between the Chinese Government and the European Commission. It is the leading China-based international business school with its main objective of contributing to the economic development of China and its integration into the world economy by preparing highly competent and internationally-oriented business leaders. After nearly 12 years' endeavor, the school has now become one of the top business schools in Asia. CEIBS is the only Asian business school that achieves Top 50 for 5 consecutive years for its MBA, EMBA and Executive Education programmes in the Financial Times' global ranking, with its MBA programme ranked 21st early this year, its EMBA programme 13th in October 2005 and its Executive Education Open programmes 37th in May 2005.
 
Mintzberg writes prolifically on the topics of management and business strategy, with more than 140 articles and sixteen books to his name. The most influential titles include:  The Nature of Managerial Work (1973),  The Structuring of Organizations: A Synthesis of the Research (1979), Power In and Around Organizations (1983),   Mintzberg on Management: Inside Our Strange World of Organizations (1989), The Strategy Process (with Joe Lampel, Sumantra Ghoshal and J.B. Quinn, 1991 ), The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning: Reconceiving the Roles for Planning, Plans, Planners (1994),   Strategy Safari (with Bruce Ahlstrand and Joe Lampel, 1998), and Managers not MBAs (2004) , etc. He is currently the Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University in Canada, where he has been teaching since 1968, after earning his Ph.D. from the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is also a visiting professor of INSEAD, London Business School and Carnegie Mellon University. Mintzberg has twice won the McKinsey Award for publishing the best article in the Harvard Business Review (1975 and 1987). In 1997 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 1998 he was made an Officer of the National Order of Quebec. His numerous awards also include: George R. Terry Award for the Best Book of the Year, Academy of Management, 1995; Distinguished Scholar Award for Contributions to Management, Academy of Management, 2000; and American Society for Training and Development, Lifetime Achievement Award in Workplace Learning and Performance, 2003.