Charles Handy

Charles Handy (born 1932) is an Irish author/philosopher specialising in organisational behaviour and management. Among the ideas he has advanced are the "portfolio worker" and the "Shamrock Organization" (in which professional core workers, freelance workers and part-time/temporary routine workers each form one leaf of the "Shamrock"). Born the son of a Church of Ireland archdeacon in Kildare, Ireland, Handy was educated as a boarder at Bromsgrove School and Oriel College, Oxford. In July 2006 he was conferred with an honorary Doctor of Laws by Trinity College, Dublin. He has been rated among the Thinkers 50, the most influential living management thinkers. In 2001 he was second on this list, behind Peter Drucker, and in 2005 he was tenth. Handy’s business career started in marketing at Shell International. He was a co-founder of the London Business School in 1967 and left Shell to teach there in 1972. When the Harvard Business Review had a special issue to mark their 50th Anniversary they asked Handy, Peter Drucker and Henry Mintzberg to write special articles. He is married to Elizabeth Handy, a photographer, with whom he has collaborated on a number of books including The New Alchemists and A Journey through Tea. Their son Scott Handy is an actor who has played with the RSC.