Abstract
Can—and should—management become a profession? My answer is “only to a limited extent” and “it depends”, based on lessons drawn from history. While some kind of a professionalization process has occurred, all efforts to develop management into a true profession have failed. In my chapter, I examine historical debates concerning whether management should become a profession and when professionalization aims have been particularly to the fore. I also describe how managerial background (education, career, recruitment) changed over time, reflecting the rudimentary professionalization process. Finally, I lift up key interpretations of why managers cannot form a fully-fledged profession, namely the inability of any educational group to monopolize top management, but also the limited interest among managers to aim for professionalization.
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Fellman, S. (2018). Management as a Profession: The Historian’s Perspective. In: Örtenblad, A. (eds) Professionalizing Leadership. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71785-2_4
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