I have been carrying around a newspaper clipping from Simon Caulking in the Observer at the start of the month. He is reviewing From Higher Aims to Hired Hands by Khurana. I have the book on order, and will blog after I have read it but there are some key points that deserve and early airing. The question of management as a profession has been around and unresolved for some time; it comes up from time to time in Knowledge Management but I think that is a lost cause (not as a valued practice, but as a recognised profession). I am more or less summarising other peoples' words hereafter.
The argument is that management schools failed to create a "grand narrative" of management as a profession with a claim to moral leadership. In consequence they were bounced into a narrower role: creating technocratic managers and super charging the careers of their graduates.
In effect this a reversal of the professional project, and the scandals of the past few years are the "bitter fruits" of business chool developments in the Seventies and Eighties.
In a really nice twist, the argument proceeds to state that if management is a means to amass wealth then it is not a profession and it gets in the way of the efficient functioning of markets. However the system is now perverted and it is not possible for the business schools to even ask, let along answer the questions that are being asked of them.
Now remember this comes from a Harvard Professor but the review reminds me of the deep levels of concern over city salaries, the general justification of greed without social or moral responsibility. There is a project here and we own Khurana a debt for raising the issue. I am looking forward to the read.
Comments (3)
Hey Dave,
Thank you so much for bringing this book to my attention. I look forward to reading it now!
-Shama
Posted by Shama Hyder | October 21, 2007 7:44 PM
Posted on October 21, 2007 19:44
Dave, I remember reading a related article in Working Knowledge, by the same author. One thing that struck me was his observation that, unlike most other occupations we consider professions (law, medicine, accounting, civil engineering), management has no certification, oversight group, or code of conduct.
This lack of governance creates an unbalanced situation where ethics are in the eye of the beholder and consequences short of criminal prosecution are nonexistent.
No wonder some managers can create an alternate reality for themselves in which their ethical missteps are rationalized away.
Are business schools to blame? Who can say. But as an MBA myself I can say that there was nothing about my graduate program that set a professional standard for me to use.
Regards John
Posted by John Caddell | October 22, 2007 2:17 PM
Posted on October 22, 2007 14:17
Dave,
I'm sure you have much more to say about this, but my impression is that most "professionalized" work has a significant Knowable/Complicated/Expert component that allows a Body of Knowledge to be defined and thereby certify practitioners and control entry.
If this is true, all professions have a significant "technocratic" Expert dimension.
Whether management really has any such significant component seems debatable.
I saw the same Working Knowledge article and found it intriguing since I heard this topic first discussed in business school in the late 70's.
Walt
Posted by Walter Smith | October 23, 2007 3:02 AM
Posted on October 23, 2007 03:02