Charles Handy

Charles Brian Handy CBE (born 25 July 1932) is an Irish author/philosopher specialising in organisational behaviour and management. Among the ideas he has advanced are the "portfolio career" and the "shamrock organization" (in which professional core workers, freelance workers and part-time/temporary routine workers each form one leaf of the "shamrock"). He has been rated among the Thinkers 50, a private list of the most influential living management thinkers. In 2001 he was second on this list, behind Peter Drucker, and in 2005 he was tenth. When the Harvard Business Review had a special issue to mark the publication's 50th anniversary Handy, Peter Drucker, and Henry Mintzberg were asked to write special articles. In July 2006 Handy was conferred with an honorary Doctor of Laws by Trinity College Dublin. Life Born the son of a Church of Ireland archdeacon in Clane, County Kildare, Ireland, Handy was educated as a boarder at Bromsgrove School and Oriel College, Oxford.