by Nicola Rowe

Created on: November 02, 2008

Medicine, yes. The law, too, and the theologian's craft. But should management also be seen as a true profession?

Rakesh Khurana and Nitin Nohria think so. Writing in last month's Harvard Business Review, they argue that it's time for management to take on, not just the status, but the accoutrements of a profession: a code of conduct whose meaning is formally transmitted to beginners and a governing body to oversee compliance. Managers have lost legitimacy, they say; to regain society's trust, "it's time that management finally became a profession."

This is a terrible idea, in practice and in theory. Pragmatically, it's difficult to see that signing a code of ethics (and the authors offer one) will actually accomplish much. Patients and clients may take moral comfort from the thought that doctors and lawyers are subject to codes of ethics, and they're likely to take substantial satisfaction in knowing that misfeasance has consequences, including the threat of a loss of the license to practise. That's a big stick, and it along with the strong socialisation that happens as freshly-minted MDs and JDs are inducted into their respective professions goes a long way towards ensuring that standards are kept.

But putting managers under the private jurisdiction of a management body is a frightening thought. We don't want to abdicate the responsibility for incompetence in management to a private governing body. That's what the courts are for: it's why negligent managers answer, not to a jury of their MBA peers, but to the law.

As Khurana and Nohria envision it, their "Certified Business Professionals" would have to commit to a certain number of hours of continuing education each year. This part of their proposal and only this part has merit. Yet, even here, we need to ask: if the CBP is a signalling device, who is it signalling to? Employers? But they can verify continuing education just as easily from a candidate's resume as from a CBP imprimatur. Customers? This seems less likely still, since customers exist at one remove from the business of management and seem to care little about the de facto managerial qualification currently in place, the MBA. The real beneficiaries of the CBP's continuing education requirement are likely to be the armies of consultants and trainers who swarm through the private sector today.

The attempt to professionalise management is an attempt to regulate something that should stay free of regulation. We don't need to professionalise management to protect anyone the laws we have do that already. The free disposition of capital is a fundamental right. The last thing we want are barriers to doing that.

Nope - management might be an art, but it isn't a true profession. And let's be grateful for that.

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