Management as a Profession

Abstract

Abstract Assertions of managerial professionalism date as far back as the origins as management as an occupation in the late nineteenth century, as managers of large corporations presented themselves as stewards of the nation's economic resources. Over the course of the twentieth century, however, first a managerial and then a market logic pushed aside the professional identity of managers. As a result, management as currently practiced does not qualify as a genuine profession, reflected in its failure to develop the key criteria that define a profession: a specialized body of knowledge; a formal system that certifies that individuals have mastered that knowledge; a commitment to the public good; and a code of ethics with means to enforce it. The article concludes that the development of a more genuine professional identity and ethos for management could go some distances toward reorienting the practice of management away from self‐interest and profit‐maximization to an approach that seeks to create sustainable, value‐creating economic enterprises that benefit society as a whole.

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