MANAGEMENT AS PROFESSION
Management as profession is a specialized body of knowledge and requires specific skills and educational qualifications.
Profession is an economic activity which requires specialized knowledge, degree and skills.
ACCORDING TO HODGE AND JOHNSON
“Profession is a vocation requiring some significant body of knowledge that is applied with high degree of consistency in the service of some relevant segment of society.”
ACCORDING TO AS HORNBY
“Profession is an occupation especially on requiring advanced education and special training.”
BODY OF SPECIALIZED KNOWLEDGE AND TECHNIQUES
Management is an organized body of knowledge built up by management practitioners, thinkers and philosophers over a period of years. Just like the Henry Fayol gave 14 principles of management and FW Taylor gave technique and principles of scientific management.
To quote APM FLEMING
“Modern Management has a technique quite apart from the technology of the particular works concerned.”
Thus, it can be said that management fulfills the criterion of being profession as it includes a set of theories and principles formulated by various management experts.
FORMALISED METHODS OF ACQUIRING TRAINING AND EXPERIENCE
In modern times, management science is fully equipped with formalized methods of acquiring training and experience by providing a specialized framework of theory and practice. To impart the management education, there are various recognized institutions throughout the world including India. Also various tools of management have been developed like:
- Business
- Psychology
- Business Law
- Statistics
- Data-Processing
- Human Resource Management
- Operations Management
- Cost Control Management
- Operations Research
- Cost Accounting
- Portfolio Management etc.
Also the business houses prefer to employ those employees who have obtained a professional degree in management from some recognized institutes.
ESTABLISHMENT OF PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS
Professional Management Associations are being established in most of the countries:
- To regulate the behavior of members
- To create a code of conduct for guiding the activities of the profession
- To promote and build up the image of management as a profession.
In India, there is All India Management Association with many local associations affiliated to this. But the main function of this association is to manage and co-ordinate the research works in the various areas of management. This is also true that the norms of managerial behavior have not established yet because of which we do not have uniform methods of entry.
CODE OF CONDUCT
Code of conduct provides the rules, regulations, norms of honesty, integrity and professional morality. Management also provides a code of conduct for all the managers but these are not rigid and specific. Just like code of conduct of doctors are regulated by All India Medical Association, code of conduct of lawyers are regulated by Bar Council of India, management has no specific body. Managers are not provided with any license to practice as management expert. So from this viewpoint, management is not regarded as profession.
PRIORITY OF SERVICE OVER ECONOMIC CONSIDERATIONS
Profession is a source of livelihood. It involves application of expert knowledge for the service of the society. In context of management, there are also some social responsibilities on the shoulders of the managers. Management aims at providing maximum efficiency at the lowest cost so as to serve the interests of employers, workers, consumers, society and nation at a large.
CONCLUSION
Management has possessed some of the features of being profession. But it cannot be rightly called as recognized profession unless it will acquire proper code of conduct and licensed practice.
To quote PETER F DRUCKER
“No greater damage could be done to our economy or to our society than attempt to professionalize management by licensing managers or by limiting access to management to people with a special academic degree.”
But this view does not hold well in present times. With the increasing competition and diverse fields of study, management must emerge as recognized profession to provide a new direction to managerial personnel at their working levels.
