Professor Henry Mintzberg, scourge of the business school world, has launched his latest attack on his own profession of management scholars by denouncing the teaching of leadership, the latest business school trend.

In Monday’s Financial Times, Prof Mintzberg writes: “We have this obsession with ‘leadership’. It’s intention may be to empower people, but its effect is often to disempower them.” By focusing on the single person, he writes, “leadership becomes part of the syndrome of individuality” that is “undermining organisations”.