Professionalizing Business Management

By Daniel O'Connor of Integral Ventures, LLC

Harvard Business School professors Rakesh Khurana and Nitin Nohria, along with research associate Daniel Penrice, have written an interesting new article entitled Is Business Management a Profession?

The article is really an inquiry into whether business management should be recast as a formal profession along the lines of law and medicine.  As motivation for this inquiry, the authors cite the sad state of business management evidenced in the recent wave of high-profile business scandals and recent polls indicating that business leaders are about as trusted as politicians.

They frame their discussion using four criteria which in their view constitute a bona fide profession:

• a common body of knowledge resting on a well-developed, widely accepted theoretical base;
• a system for certifying that individuals possess such knowledge before being licensed or otherwise allowed to practice;
• a commitment to use specialized knowledge for the public good, and a renunciation of the goal of profit maximization, in return for professional autonomy and monopoly power;
• a code of ethics, with provisions for monitoring individual compliance with the code and a system of sanctions for enforcing it.

These are powerful and controversial ideas when placed in the context of the debate over corporate responsibility.  For example:

• Would professional certification along these lines enhance the integrity of management decision making? 
• What would be the implications for corporate governance and strategy of a renunciation of the goal of profit maximization and the adoption of an enforced code of ethics?
• What might be the economic, social, political, and ecological consequences of a professional certification that would cover over 100,000 new MBAs each and every year in the US alone?

These are also powerful and controversial ideas when placed in the context of the debate over business education:

• Would professional certification alter the incentive structure of a business career to such an extent that a different mix of people would be attracted to the profession?
• Would professionalizing the orthodox business curriculum, with its neoclassical economic paradigm, help or hinder the development of more ethical managers in the years ahead?
• Would it be possible to reconcile the terms of this professional certification with the orthodox theories and practices being taught, as well as the teaching methods themselves?

© 2005 by Daniel J. O'Connor.  All Rights Reserved.