Business Administration: Management and Professionalism

I'll assume that you have a decent amount of work experience in an organization where there are a lot of people that you've never met at "higher" levels of management. Almost without a doubt, a few times in your career, you have referred to someone in these upper levels as "them" or "they." For example, you've probably said something like "Do you know what they did now?" or "They have no idea what it's like around here!" Well, a lot of times you have probably been right. Especially if you've never met people at higher levels in your chain of command, there is at least some chance that they don't understand your situation and make some pretty unenlightened decisions.

When I teach an Introduction to Management course (or some similar title) as a professor of business administration, I spend months with a group of people that generally has not had this kind of experience. In other words, most people who have gone to college directly from high school do not have appreciable professional experience, and their understandings of a real workplace are generally formed by listening to their parents, watching popular media, and by a lot of other hearsay and sensationalism. They must be forgiven for this, but as the semester rolls along, I cannot help but notice that as they learn about management, they still view managers as the "them" in their futures. This is especially true when we study such issues as ethics or social responsibility, using companies in the media as current examples of how to really screw up.

Despite my level of compassion for their plight, and respect for their passion as citizens in a corporatized society, once in a while I have to stop and say something like this:

"Look, guys. This is an interesting discussion, but I can't help notice the point of view here. You need to understand that this is not some kind of sociology-of-business course, studied in the third-person. This is a management course and the presumption is that you, someday and probably a lot sooner than you think, are going to become managers. If you are going to have a successful career, you are probably going to have some level of management responsibility and accountability in less time than it will take you to get this degree. Get used to the idea that we are discussing your future here, not the people or companies you will be working for."

That often stuns a lot of people, especially those who are captives in a course that they have to take, who hold managers in contempt already and have no such aspirations to ever, ever become so mercenary. A lot of them plan on going into business for themselves, as if that will circumvent becoming managers!

The title of this essay presumes that you are a relatively new manager, whether through the school of hard knocks or after formal training/education. If you are to be successful, you must accept a new "locus" of the source of the management in your professional life. In other words, you are one of "them" now and you don't get the chance to say "them" anymore, without sounding like someone who didn't deserve the promotion.

Being a professional manager involves a lot more than wearing clothes that are a little more formal and dull than the non-managers. It involves a lot more than learning a new vocabulary full of buzzwords that you really don't understand anyway. It especially involves a lot more than a diploma or training certificate that you can hang on your office wall, assuming you have a wall to hang something on in the first place.

A lot of people, including me, believe that management is a profession. Oh sure, there is no single credential like an MBA degree that formalizes your entrance to this profession, but there are lots of professional societies that establish, guard and continuously raise the bar of management skill and behavior in almost every industry or field. I leave it to you to investigate what one applies to you; here I will only assert that whether or not you even do this, is a dead-on sign of your attitude as a management professional. In other words, you are philosophically free to either accept or reject management as a profession, but if you are a manager, you are not free to reject management professionalism in attitude and behavior. This has been thrust upon you and it is yours to either screw up or develop for the rest of your career.

That being said, what makes a profession a profession? There are many opinions, but I quote something about a half-century old:

"First, the practice of a profession must rest on a systematic body of knowledge of substantial intellectual content and on the development of personal skill in the application of this knowledge to specific cases. Second, there must exist standards of professional conduct, which take precedence over the goal of personal gain ... A profession has its own association of members, among whose functions are the enforcement of standards, the advancement and dissemination of knowledge, and, in come degree, the control of entry into the profession. Finally, there is some prescribed way of entering the profession through the enforcement of minimum standards of training and competence" (R.A. Gordon and E.J. Howell, Higher Education for Business, New York, Columbia University Press, 1959; and F.C. Pierson, The Education of American Businessmen: A Study of University-College Programs in Business Administration, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959.)

So, you may be thinking that in your job, there is no such body of knowledge, codification of the relevant skills, standards of conduct and ethics, association, or recognition of entry. You might be right. A lot of "management" jobs don't really deserve the title, according to these criteria. Just getting a raise and the right to boss someone around doesn't automatically make you a manager. Jobs with titles such as "supervisor," "team leader" and "foreman" are sometimes caught between a rock and a hard place, and are really tough jobs exactly because the roles are not clarified. If you're stuck in this kind of dilemma, don't sweat it; it's probably "their" fault.