Professionalization of management in the contested space between bureaucracy and profession

Abstract

Professionalization of management seems to imply that management in some way or another is a profession. The paper show how the way management is seen as a professional role and set of skills in a specific organizational context deeply affects the possibility for professionalizing management. The paper takes its point of departure in the study of managers in a professional service firm, the Danish branch of a Big 4 accounting company. Studies of professional service firms have shown that these firms are different from most other organizations in the way they practice management and organize. The owners (partners) and managers are professional experts working side-by-side with senior and junior accountants. The professional work, norms and values are in focus, while problems of management and organization are secondary issues, if present at all, in the way these firms see themselves. What happens then when their top-managements try to develop management roles and skills? The study follows a group of young accountants who are appointed managers, and show how different levels of accept of the logic behind management constrains or enables the managers to act as managers. The paper discusses this in a framework of logics of organization and management. The accounting based organization in the case is seen as managed and organized anchored in a professional logic while the ideas, norms and values behind management is seen as based on a bureaucratic logic. The paper discusses whether management can be seen as profession or not. At face value management does not (at present) qualify as a profession in the strict sense but the professionalization of management might push it in that direction. The case shows that accept of management as a professional task and role in itself may be the precondition for the development of high quality (i.e. “professionalization”) of management. Ironically, the conflict between professionals and managers could be seen as rivalry between professions with different sets of interests and foci. Management’s professional focus is management and organization. Developing management to a legitimate profession might create the mutual respect between professions which could prevent unfortunate conflicts in organizations and in the end it may an opportunity to make managers accountable to a professional ethics and regain some of the lost legitimacy of the occupation.