Professing Management.
‘Mój mąż z zawodu jest dyrektorem.’ — Stanisław Bareja
Is management a profession in the first place?
No, management is not a profession.
At least according to Richard Barker, a professor at Oxford and Cambridge. While he recognizes that managers tend to hold a status in society similar to that of doctors and lawyers, he finds it inappropriate and misguided. His arguments are legion:
Management has no formal certifications by professional associations. There is no established body of knowledge to be acquired — MBA curricula are not standardized. No ‘code of conduct’ is enforced, ethical standards are not established or regulated in any way. No mechanism can exclude somebody from the practice and one can be a great manager without an MBA certificate. Managers’ roles are inherently general, variable, and indefinable. Their individual careers and experiences are widely diverse. And, a crowning argument, business schools are not professional schools, they are at best incubators for ’leadership.’
Yes, management is a profession.
In fact, management is the most noble of professions, if practiced well, according to Clayton Christensen, a professor as well. Why so?
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Well, you can serve others — you can take active ownership for important, meaningful, rewarding tasks. You can tackle them well by coordinating the joint effort of a team or organization entrusted to you. You can help other people lead more meaningful and fulfilling lives every day. You can make them feel acknowledged and appreciated at work, and thus less stressed when they get back home. You can potentially become part of something bigger than yourself. You can provide for your family in an ethical and honorable way.
For Barker management is not a profession, for Christensen it’s the noblest one. That’s quite a range.
Those who believe management is more like running the circus from the monkey cage may appreciate another distinguished professor, Henry Mintzberg. He said that:
Management is a curious phenomenon. It is generously paid, enormously influential, and significantly devoid of common sense.
This tongue-in-cheek provocation accompanies a serious and considered view that management is not a science, a profession, or a set of techniques. It is a practice learned through experience — an observable craft.
And there’s one more management professor. Abraham Zaleznik. For him, managers are basically low-lives.
In his influential 1977 HBR article, Zaleznik argued that managers and leaders are fundamentally different kinds of people — psychologically, that is. Managers were bureaucratic, passive, and controlling; leaders visionary, imaginative, and inspiring.
The popular dichotomy idealizes leaders as creative visionaries engaged in a heroic, almost artistic act of transformation. Managers are left with the rather less flattering end of the bargain. LinkedIn and Medium are still full of posts following that structure.
With that range of opinion, can management be professed well at all?
