Recognizing and raising professionalism behaviors within the culture of business undergraduates: Working paper series--10-10 (original) (raw)
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Business education may need an overhaul when it comes to training students to become socially responsible managers and professionals, evidenced by the prevalence of questionable practices of corporate agents trained by the present educational system. In this regard, this study relies on frameworks of professionalism as defined by scholars (Brint, 1996; Freidson, 2001; Imse, 1962) to examine the values and attitudes of business students as they graduate but before joining their profession. The study used survey responses of senior-level undergraduate students, from over 100 colleges in the US, collected by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) across two academic years 2006-2007 and 2007-2008. Survey responses from the College Senior Survey (CSS) database formed a nationally representative sample for testing the research questions. This research utilized business students' factor scores derived from a prior confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using the same CSS dataset to compare business students' factor scores with those of students from other academic majors (Nino, 2013). The CFA constructs below were modeled to validate their position in an overall framework of students' precursors of professionalism at the end of their undergraduate education (Nino, 2013). The four precursors of professionalism used for comparison were as follows: " autonomy of judgment, " " desire for expertise, " " self-concept, " and " social-agency. " The results revealed that business students differ significantly from other students in college in three of the four categories testing for professionalism.
Changing the Culture: An Institution-wide Approach to Instilling Professional Values
American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 2004
Professional socialization is a process that must engage the entire organization for it to be optimally effective. 1 While the curriculum focuses on technical competence and could cover subject matter such as ethics and professionalism in a formal, didactic manner, a 360degree approach would consider all of the ways that we affect the professional development of our students, from admission through graduation and beyond. Thus, professionalism is both a curricular and an extracurricular concern. The purpose of this paper is to describe how one organization is changing its culture by examining ways to influence professional socialization throughout a student's and faculty member's entire academic experience in a school of pharmacy. While the focus is on students, transformation of faculty members is also essential. Students will flounder without appropriate role models. Therefore, some examples also address the professional socialization of the faculty. Specific programs and changes that have been implemented are described. In addition, efforts to assess the impact of the changes are reported.
From Student to Professional: Teaching Professionalism in the Marketing Classroom
Marketing Education Review, 2020
Developing professionalism skills in the classroom is vital to the business college experience as educators strive to ensure preparedness and success of their graduates. Marketers especially need enhanced professionalism training, as their careers involve interactions with many constituents. In this paper, the authors develop a semester-long emphasis on professionalism that introduces the concept, embeds its importance throughout the course with discussion and relevant exercises, and includes a component to monitor and evaluate professional behavior. Assessments at the beginning and end of the semester provide evidence for learning outcomes, both quantitatively and qualitatively, that speak to the effectiveness of its implementation.
With increased scrutiny over the value and promise of higher education, liberal arts degrees face criticism, in favor of professional degrees like business that position students for a linear career path to lucrative work. Research for this article is based on 20 interviews with college students majoring in Arts and Sciences, who completed a summer program to obtain a business minor. Our findings demonstrate that participants talk about the business minor as a key factor in 'selling themselves' to potential employers by (1) highlighting the discipline required to complete the program, (2) acting as a conversation starter with potential employees, and (3) emphasizing the broad applicability of a business minor. Implications demonstrate the power of professionalism to render specialized knowledge (like business knowledge) insignificant while offering an extension of Williams' ideal-worker norm to young people.
Conceptions of Professionalism in U.S. Research Universities: Evidence from the gradSERU Survey
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Recent scholars of the professions have argued that a new hybrid form of professionalism is becoming dominant. This new form combines traditional commitments to ethics and community service with new commitments to managerial and entrepreneurial objectives. We analyze the perceptions of 4,300 U.S. graduate students in 21 fields concerning how well their programs have prepared them for leadership and management and for ethics and community service. These assessments allow us to examine the prevalence of this new conception of professionalism and to examine it in relation to two other conceptions: the “neo-classical” emphasis on ethics and community service as opposed to leadership and management, and another that emphasizes a divergence between business and technical professions on one side and social and cultural professions on the other. Hybridization was comparatively rare but occurred more frequently among students preparing for management, law, and medicine, and among men and stu...
International Business Research
One of the biggest challenges of our time is to develop the management discipline into a true profession. In this respect, business schools have been accused for failing to promote better policies and management practices as well as failing to educate students, as prospective managers, about their moral and social responsibilities. This essay outlines a multi-dimensional framework for professionalization, involving the dimensions of purpose, knowledge, behavior, and expectation. Subsequently, this framework is used to define and explore various paths out of the current intellectual stasis of the field of management and business. A key pathway is creating a shared sense of professional purpose and responsibility; another important route involves developing a professional body of knowledge informed by both discovery and validation; third, so-called ‘trading zones’ need to be developed, to offer opportunities for (professionals with) different voices and interests to meet; ...
The effectiveness of professionalism depends on the qualities, skills, competence, behaviors' and relevance of a professional in the corporate environment. To excel corporate etiquettes and to develop professional consciousness are essential requirements of an individual to survive and sustain in the corporate world. The corporate etiquette and professional skills are an amalgamated soft skill that directly reflects one's personality. Corporate etiquettes are a set of business ethics and professional protocols which determines and executes professional obligations and ethical principles of the corporate culture. The code of obligations and ethical principles are applicable to all aspects of an enterprise. Professional obligations are the underlying concept behind the successful accomplishment of an individual in the corporate world as well as for the fulfillment of the aims and objectives of an organization. The significance of corporate etiquettes is emerging day by day. Pr...
2020
Professional socialization of graduate students is a give-and-take process due to its complexity and dynamism. This paper, which falls under organizational behavior focuses on the three approaches to socialization of graduate studentsfunctionalist, interpretive and critical. The author views professional socialization from the standpoint of interpretive approach, which argues that a student plays a significant role in the professional socialization process. While the department puts the student through the socialization process, the student makes a decision and chooses how to behave through the socialization process. Thus, the student influences socialization process just as the socialization process influences the student's professional preparation. The paper focuses on graduate students because of the assumption that graduate study plays a fundamental role in socializing and preparing students for work and developing an early professional identity. t i o n p r o v i d e s a n...
Higher education is considered responsible for developing undergraduate awareness of the importance and meaning of professional conduct among students, along with other non-technical skills. Understanding what constitutes ethical practice and industry expectations of performance standards is critical in helping new graduates prepare for their transition to the workplace. This study explores the influence of Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) on developing undergraduate awareness of the code of conduct pertaining to their chosen profession. Data is gathered from 91 Australian Business undergraduates who completed a work placement as part of their degree program. Findings indicate that WIL enhances undergraduate awareness of professional conduct in a number of ways and highlight the important role of WIL in providing a rich insight into the realities of professional conduct in the world-of-work. Harnessing the potential for WIL to develop critical practitioners who may challenge, rather than simply accept, the professional code is discussed.