Management as a Profession: Definition, Education, and Standards

Defining Management as a Profession

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a profession is: (a) a calling requiring specialized knowledge and often long and intensive academic preparation; (b) a principal calling, vocation, or employment; and (c) the whole body of persons engaged in a calling. Increasingly, management as a class of employment has come to be seen as a profession that qualifies on all three levels of this definition. Though there are pathways into this field that do not necessarily require years of intensive academic education — varying by industry and often by pay scale — there is a clear sense that those who engage in management as a vocational calling often require both years of education and years of internal preparation to hold the position (Crainer, 2010, pp. 12–16). Increasingly, the prerequisite to a management position is sought through formal education, and a combination of formal education and provable experience is seen as essential where a former organization managed is successful and profitable.

Crainer states:

The last century witnessed the dramatic genesis of management — management emerged as a profession. It has moved from an unspoken, informal, ad hoc activity into one that is routinely analysed and commented on from every angle possible. Management has emerged from the shadows to be recognized as one of the driving forces of economic and personal life. Nothing — no organisation, no activity — now appears beyond the scope or ambition of management. (p. 13)

By varying degrees of field and organization, management has become a much more formal idea and practice, with higher standards of professionalism and higher standards of action for those who participate.

Management as a profession is the administration and organization of people, resources, and the business aspects of an organization to optimize conditions of profit and salability of a product — and, depending on the organization, a multitude of other factors that enable employees to carry out their various tasks. Managers as a group are more than ever seen as a profession, defined by skill, education both on the job and in a formal setting, and by their ability to lead and organize in a professional manner to meet the desired outcomes of the organization. There are probably more works of nonfiction produced in the area of management than in nearly any other profession every year internationally, and managers are increasingly expected to continue their education both formally and informally for the duration of their role (White, 2012, p. 2).

The Role of Business Schools and Formal Education

Crainer also points out the variation in management noted by organization, but then poignantly addresses it by citing another expert — the fact that, regardless of the type of organization, the types of problems or concerns that managers face are often universal and universally challenging:

Management is all-embracing, and managers are everywhere. There are, of course, differences in management between different organisations — mission defines strategy, after all, and strategy defines structure. But the differences between managing a chain of retail stores and managing a Roman Catholic diocese are amazingly fewer than either retail executives or bishops realize, says Drucker. The differences are mainly in application rather than in principles. The executives of all these organisations spend, for instance, about the same amount of their time on people problems — and the people problems are almost always the same. (p. 13)

According to Drucker, as cited in Crainer, the variations in managers' work across different organizations usually amount to only about ten percent of the work done. This, according to some, invites the opportunity for formal education to prepare managers for managing while leaving the variations to on-the-job training. The challenge then becomes how to define and develop the role of business schools and management training to assert management as a profession.

Reinventing Management: Leadership, Innovation, and Respect

According to Khurana (2007), in his widely reviewed work From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession, the varied purposes of business schools at their inception can lead to challenges in defining management as a profession: "providing graduates with the skills required for particular business roles, developing an academic science of management, instilling social norms of professionalism and meeting the demands of students and alumni" (Beard, 2010, p. 93). While some of these intentions are viewed favorably, others highlight an enduring challenge — how to train managers to both develop and utilize innovation while supporting the status quo demand that business be as profitable as possible.

One expert, Birkinshaw, stresses that the current face of management is a challenge to the profession — and really to everyone — as managers are not well respected, employees are often unsatisfied with their managers, and there are few positive role models that illuminate the role as one that a young person might aspire to (2010, p. 12). This is not to say that more individuals than ever before are not seeking to educate themselves to manage businesses, often with the eventual intent of entrepreneurship. Yet to some degree the manager as a professional figure is still lacking a glorified identity of the sort a child might spontaneously name as a desired adult role. Birkinshaw attributes this to the anomalous nature of the manager, though aspiring to the ranks of firefighter or ballet dancer is not necessarily something that management as a profession need strive for. What management as a profession should aspire to, ultimately, is to reinvent itself in such a way that it becomes inspiring.

Birkinshaw stresses that as leadership has emerged as a scholarly endeavor, management has fallen by the wayside, and that merging leadership and management in both ideal and task should be the goal of all those involved — so as to raise management to the level it deserves. To better understand this thesis, one must understand what Birkinshaw means by each concept: "leadership is what you say and how you say it, whereas management is what you do and how you do it" (p. 12). These are compatible ideas in any circumstance, without the unnecessary subversion of management as an inferior role to leadership. In arguing this point, Birkinshaw details an argument in favor of reinventing — or at least redefining — management:

The argument here runs as follows: management as we know it today was developed for the industrial era, in which capital was the scarce resource. Today, it is knowledge. Firms gain advantage not by working efficiently but by harnessing initiative and creativity. (p. 12)

Conclusion

The vast number — though relatively constant — challenges of management are thought of by many as core sets of characteristics associated with management as a profession. Though theory and practice can vary, the reality is that the managers of tomorrow need to redefine and reassert both the importance of their role and the demands of continuing formal and informal education. Though there are movements within the management theory sector to license and certify management and business programs, and even to test individuals leaving them, most experts would like to see individual organizations continue to be allowed to choose individuals with or without formal education, as per the needs of their organization. Most importantly, this paper has detailed the need to redefine and even elevate management to a new level of respect — recognizing that, like any profession, there are both good and bad practitioners — and to constantly strive to demand the former in important management roles, thus ensuring the rise of management as a recognized and respected profession.