Vol. 56, No. 7 — July 1975 —
Business Management
as a Profession
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Management problems have expanded like the
mushroom shaped cloud that has become symbolic of this nuclear
age.
It is clear to all who are willing to look that in every
form of activity in a free society there must be leadership
that is creatively conceived and voluntarily accepted by those
it leads. New and enhanced powers of insight and capability
for action are needed. The business manager must see some
hand-breadths deeper than others into the increasing problems
and uncertainties of life, business and society.
His is a vocation which he has chosen for reasons of his
special natural fitness. He has prepared for it by acquiring
expert knowledge which he will increase by study and practice.
He finds his reward in his love of the work he does, the meeting
of challenges, and the distinction he achieves by his application
of intelligently-directed skill.
Whether what he does is called a profession or a job does
not matter much to a zealous business manager. After all,
the distinction between crafts and professions is not clear-cut.
Alfred North Whitehead said: "In all stages of civilization,
crafts are shot through and through with flashes of constructive
understanding and professions are based upon inherited procedures."
Foresight based upon theory, and theory based upon understanding
of the nature of things, are equally necessary in business
management and the learned professions.
A full-fledged profession is a vocation in which these conditions
exist: it demands that practitioners acquire an intellectually
based technique; that they assume a relationship of responsibility
toward clients; that they are organized into responsible associations
which set standards for admission to practise and exercise
control over the action of their members through codes of
ethics.
President W. E. Wickenden, of the Case School of Applied
Science, went a step further when he described the obligations
of a professional person. Speaking before the Engineering
Institute of Canada, he said that every calling has its mile
of compulsory work, but: "Beyond this lies the mile of voluntary
effort, where men strive for excellence, give unrequited service
to the good, and seek to invest their words with a wide and
enduring significance. It is only in this second mile that
a calling may attain to the dignity and the distinction of
a profession."
Three forms of control
We live in a mixed economy in which control by competition,
by governmental regulation and by self-regulation are combined.
While the first two are generally viewed as desirable in our
present state of evolution, many people in business yearn
for a higher status, one in which business may attain professionalism
by self-regulation.
The concept of professionalism implies, essentially, a particular
form of control over the conduct of the practitioner. This
control is through voluntary codes which have been formulated
by his equals in rank with primary concern for the public
interest and which are enforced by these same peers.
No one in professional life can escape these regulatory
conditions, nor can he avoid the obligation to contribute
to the advancement of his group. His own knowledge is part
of a common fund, built up over the centuries, a fund to which
he is obligated to add.
The growth of trade associations, better business bureaus,
chambers of commerce and service clubs suggests that business
is in the process of developing professional associations
similar to those in the traditional professions.
The place of business
Business is a many-sided phenomenon. A dictionary classifies
it as any gainful occupation of which profit is the goal and
in which there is risk of loss. It includes the production
and sale of goods, their transportation and their financing;
and the performing of services that contribute to the well-being
and the life-styles of people. The earning of profit is something
more than the accumulation of wealth: it is an essential condition
of success and its absence means the firm's failure.
In most parts of the world industrialization, which is the
application of non-human power to machinery, has meant an
advance in material civilization, a rise in the standards
of living, an improved status and greater political power
for the working classes: it has bettered health, lengthened
life, lessened laborious toil, and brought with it greater
leisure.
After his retirement in 1937 from his post as head of the
Department of Political Economy in the University of Toronto,
the late Professor E. J. Urwick wrote a series of essays,
published after his death as The Values of Life (University
of Toronto Press, 1948). In his essay on "Progress", he wrote:
"There could have been no advance from the brutish existence
of primitive man without increase of material wherewith to
equip a better life, due in turn to increase of knowledge
and inventiveness."
Many men and women have found themselves at a loss to know
what role was expected of them. Business has neither the mystique
nor the canons and precepts of the learned professions, and
yet a person in business is judged not alone by his knowledge
of business but also by his superior mental acuteness and
discernment, his keen insight, and the way he lives.
The manager is the impresario of industry, upon whom rests
the weight of responsibility for the status of business. University
schools of commerce train people in all the sciences underlying
business, and are tending toward inculcating a professional
attitude in the socially desirable aspects, of their calling.
Management qualities
As in any occupation, there are two considerations when
matching a person and a management job: the fitness of the
place for the person and the fitness of the person for the
place.
Everyone aspiring to an administrative post is required
to have high integrity, positive dependability, skill in co-ordinating,
persistence in performing and self-confidence.
Competence must combine thoroughness and proficiency. There
is nothing that will take the place of expert knowledge, technical
skill and trained vision, Whether in a learned profession
or in business, a person is only as good as his performance
proves that he is.
Responsibility is a necessary quality. The top level executive,
like the top level professional person, can never escape from
it. By "responsible" is meant the capability to distinguish
right from wrong, and also accountability, both legal and
moral, for actions taken and actions not taken.
Knowledge must be applied with intelligence. This is an
age in which we have to stretch our minds. Complex business
organization requires the intellectual adventure of analysis
and the imaginative bringing together of many factors and
ideas. To conquer difficulties and solve problems, to triumph
over opposition and obstacles: these are possible only when
your reflective processes are given a chance to flourish.
In Business and the Man, first of the Alexander Hamilton
Institute modern business texts, which has become widely recognized
as a business classic, Dean Joseph French Johnson had this
to say: "On the intellectual side, the top executive has need
of an orderly and 'scientific' type of mind. At the same time,
he should possess a vivid, constructive imagination, an intuitive
knowledge of men, and a personality which makes others rally
to him as a leader."
These qualities are not beyond the power of young men and
women to cultivate. No one needs to feel fenced in. There
is always a frontier in business for the person with an open
mind, an ideal, ambition and determination.
Both business and the professions would dry up without leaders
who believe in ideas, because in any calling an achievement
is first of all a concept developed by the mind. Dr. Hans
Selye, Director of the Institute of Experimental Medicine
and Surgery at the Université de Montréal, pointed
this up in the extraordinarily fitting title of his book on
the work of his lifetime. He called it FROM DREAM TO DISCOVERY.
It was published by McGraw-Hill Book Company in 1964.
A profession is more than a set of rules and procedures
that depend upon experience or observation alone. It organizes
a body of ideas and develops them into knowledge in accordance
with a special point of view, and provides a framework for
action and research.
New ideas about things and about behaviour are knocking
at our doors every year. The starting points for debating
societies today, the self-evident truths upon which the debaters
build their arguments, would have appeared as startling innovations
to people of fifty years ago.
Encompassed as he is by these new thoughts, the business
manager must be able to discriminate. He can diagnose unfamiliar
circumstances because he is proficient in his knowledge of
similarities and differences. He has the ability to isolate
essential facts from the complications in which they are embedded.
He is able to draw things together. He makes a wise decision
with regard to operations when he has evaluated the problem
in terms of sales policy, public relations, financial implications,
and other phases of his business.
What leadership requires
Leadership in any business or profession means initiative
- getting an operation off the ground, carrying it through
in spite of discouragement, and wrapping it up. This demands
a constellation of personality qualifications and motivations.
Positions of leadership are won by strongly individualistic
persons who have acquired the skills and attitudes necessary
in their field of endeavour. The true business person has
vision, self-confidence, venturesomeness, curiosity and judgment.
He combines the qualities of the dreamer and the practical
builder. The professional person's special characteristic
is his ability to assimilate, integrate and evaluate the necessary
data and come up with the correct answer.
Being a leader has many compensations, but it is a hard
job, and often a lonely job. It is incorrect to think that
an executive can always make the right decisions if he is
surrounded by a sufficient number of expert advisers. He must
be able to distinguish and define the possible lines of action
among which he has the responsibility of making a choice,
realizing that he is in a position where action or abstention
from action affects many people. Managers and people in the
learned professions have to be their own inspectors and critics.
The manager is the person behind the mechanism of business.
He can be an idealist in purpose and a realist in action.
Sound administration of a law office, a factory or a medical
practice is the product of maturity - mature imagination,
mature perception and judgment, mature human interests and
values.
Wherever his lot may be cast and whatever his special qualities
may be, every person has the right and duty to become all
he can become. At the basis of every profession that is worthy
of the title there is the goal of excellence.
One must progress. To advance in skill and authority does
not mean that one reaches an end. It brings a clearer vision
of more things to be attained. The person who does not keep
up with the times, or, rather, anticipate the future, will
soon be obsolete. College courses and textbooks are entitled
"Managers for Tomorrow". One does not see advertisements for
managers of the status quo.
Education for business
A general education, which is a process of cultivation of
the mind, is sound preparation for a career in business. It
is not enough to know only what is needed for a particular
job if you plan to do it masterfully.
It is characteristic of all professions that they demand
of their members and practitioners a broad and deep universal
education rather than a narrow and specialized training.
Professions have arisen by carving out of the common occupations
of men who work with their brains some special field to which
they devote their attention. These have been among the greatest
agencies in civilization, and as human society becomes more
complex it produces new professions which help it to advance.
Increasing numbers of young men and young women with good
general education are preparing themselves for the special
requirements of managerial roles by studying in schools of
business, and more and more junior executives are preparing
themselves for positions of greater responsibility by attendance
at the many institutes, night classes and company training
programmes now being provided.
Schools of commerce and business administration are founded
upon the belief that principles underlie the subject, capable
of being worked out inductively from the results of observation,
comparison and reflection; capable also of being taught, especially
by the solution of problems in which these principles are
involved. This is one of the underlying principles of all
the recognized professions, and it is evident that business
is moving toward professional stature.
At the dedication of new buildings of the Harvard Business
School in 1927, Owen D. Young, Chairman of the Board of the
General Electric Company, said: "Today and here business formally
assumes the obligations of a profession, which means responsible
action as a group, devotion to its own ideals, the creation
of its own codes, the capacity for its own discipline, the
awards of its own honours, and the responsibility for its
own service."
That strong statement of purpose and expectation epitomizes
the hope of business managers. To know, to get into the truth
of things, is a mystic act carrying with it a new concept
of the possibilities in a job. To know the principles that
govern a proposition, and to understand the place of the proposition
in the broad scheme of things, builds self-confidence, self-reliance
and self-respect.
The effects upon our mental life of having wide knowledge
have been many and various. The simplest knowledge is the
result of complex processes. Even in seeing an apple fall.
from a tree, whether one is prompted to discover a law like
Newton's or not, one uses every mental power: sensation, emotion,
will, memory, perception, and thought.
A thoroughgoing professional-type education provides you
with a compass and a readable map and sufficient general landmarks
to find your way through life, to calculate risks with safety,
to form plans, to allocate resources and to conduct operations.
There are to be found some self-satisfied persons who boast
that they pay no attention to knowledge that is not functional
in their vocation. Such people are narrow in their outlook
and limited in their attainments. The business manager who
knows nothing but debit and credit, input and output, can
be as hampered in his prospects as a university man who knows
nothing but Greek and Latin, and no authorities but Aristotle
and Seneca. The art of management, even in an industry that
rests for its success on the achievements of the scientist
and the engineer, requires a broadly cultivated mind.
There comes a period in life, early to some, later to others,
when a person senses his lack of familiarity with history,
philosophy, great literature, fine arts or music. Acquaintance
with these is needed to round off the sharp edges and fill
in the gaps in a business manager's knowledge of the precision
tools of his daily work.
Professional ethics
In any life activity where we have to exercise choice, and
to prefer this to that of two possible acts, it is necessary
to have a distinction of good and bad, or at least of better
and worse. Ethics is the science which seeks to determine
these.
It is the collective expression of high ethical standards
for the individual that is the foundation for the professional
standards of people acting in groups. This is a higher conception
than mere compliance with regulatory statutes and criminal
laws. Ralph Waldo Emerson said: "Every man takes care that
his neighbour does not cheat him. But a day comes when he
begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbour. Then
all goes well."
Getting ahead in the business world can be entirely consistent
with following the soundest and most ethical rules for successful
living. There is no intrinsic difference between business
ethics and ethics in general. The moral standards that should
govern people's behaviour ought to apply to their actions
in business. The essence of practical ethics is found in the
Golden Rule: in business this law finds expression in "the
square deal".
Many businesses have followed the lead of the learned professions
by working out effective codes of ethics designed to improve
their business practices. Trade associations have developed
and strengthened these codes over the years.
There can be no substitute in any area of human activity
for the person of integrity. This applies to the manager of
a factory, a sales force, a financial institution, a trade
union or any other business. The words associated with integrity
in the dictionary are: moral soundness, honesty, freedom from
corrupting influence or practice, strictness in the fulfilment
of contracts and in the discharge of trusts.
Sir John Maud, who served as high commissioner for the United
Kingdom in South Africa, said in a radio address: "Though
we may rightly try to be 'all things to all men', what really
matters, surely, is that we should be one man to all men.
That is what the man of integrity is."
Dealing with people
Business is a human organization that touches the lives
and welfare of many people. A business executive is not evaluated
by his office ability alone - the handling of papers and the
direction of operations. His worth includes his capacity to
understand and get along with all kinds of people.
Mechanical problems are relatively simple compared with
human problems. They can usually be solved by known rules
or passed on to technicians. The only certain way to deal
with people individually or in the mass - and their behaviour
differs in many startling ways - is to develop a continuing
and orderly interchange of ideas with them.
A talent for communication is valuable. The manager encounters
every day the necessity for the adequate communication of
ideas. He must be able to write and speak with clarity and
felicity.
Rewards of management
Dignity, a basic human need, is essential in the life of
a business manager, just as it is in the learned professions.
It must be earned dignity, for a dignity that has to be contended
for is not worth having.
The evidences of power and rank are normal incentives in
business life. Status is public or it is nothing, so there
must be some way of giving it public expression. It has symbols
that demonstrate that a person has qualities that are valued
by his fellow man.
Titles are not decorative status symbols: they should indicate
and imply responsibility for discharging duties. Every professional
man earns his title and continues to earn it throughout his
career, and his title carries with it honour and respect.
A person does not enhance a job by giving it a fancy name
but by doing the job in an excellent way.
Service to society
The motivation of service to society is the hallmark of
a true profession, and discussion of the social responsibility
of business is commonplace in leading business circles.
A corporation is not merely an association of stockholders
who have combined to do something. It is also an instrumentality
for social progress. The manager is responsible for expressing
the good citizenship of his firm, and executives must weigh
the public consequences of their decisions.
President Wickenden said in his lecture: "Professional status
is an implied contract to serve society in consideration of
the honour, rights and protection society extends to the profession.
Through all professional relations runs a threefold thread
of accountability, to colleagues, to clients and to the public."
R. H. Tawney of Oxford said in The Acquisitive Society
(Harcourt Brace & Howe, 1920): "The work of making boots
or building a house is itself no more degrading than that
of curing the sick or teaching the ignorant. It is as necessary
and therefore as honourable. It should be at least equally
bound by rules which have as their object to maintain the
standards of professional service. It should be at least equally
free from the vulgar subordination of moral standards to financial
interests."
It does not really matter what one's vocation is called,
trade, job, business or profession. What does matter is that
we have found the part we are to play, that we are doing the
work for which we are best endowed, that we are filling a
vital need and that we are meeting our obligations.
Published by RBC Financial Group. All editions from the RBC
Letter collection are available on our web site at www.rbc.com/responsibility/letter.
Our e-mail address is: rbcletter@rbc.com.
Publié aussi en francais.
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