How and Why Management Has Not Become a Profession (original) (raw)
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Professionalization of management: towards a Nordic model
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Management & Organizational History, 2014
Market transformations and organisational changes lead to new needs for managerial competence, and such changes are proposed to influence the institution of management education over time. However, in an examination of the educational backgrounds of Norwegian CEOs from 1936 to 2009, this paper finds that changes in the institution of management education cannot be interpreted as direct responses to the organisational and external changes that companies face. This study suggests that the institution of management education is modified rather than fundamentally changed. These modifications can largely be explained by the concepts of institutional solidarity (i.e. dominant agents define what management education is, and this understanding is difficult to change due to path dependencies in the recruitment of top managers) and institutional plasticity (i.e. the "stretching" of established institutional scripts to fit new contexts).
Nygaard: Professional Autonomy versus Corporate Control
Professionalism and bureaucracy tend to be understood as incompatible systems of work organization, represented by the ideals of collegiality and autonomy versus control and supervision. I present a historical case study from early 20th century Norway examining the potential clash between efforts made toward professionalization and bureaucratization in industry. Based on my findings, I argue that there is neither an inherent conflict between professionalism and bureaucracy nor static national trajectories at the level of professional versus bureaucratic work organization.
2011
Even though important actors such as the Swedish government publicly claim to favour the Swedish model, at least when suitable, the model has lost much of its support. Instead, there has been a growing public interest in ideas about a distinctive Swedish style of management, which is argued to be in line with new forms of management and thus competitive in a proclaimed new working life. In this paper, it is however argued that much of what is attributed to Swedish management and part of new working life in fact is the historical outcome of bargaining, union influence and participation actually included in the Swedish model. With reference to the Swedish model and Swedish management, the purpose of this paper is, first, to map out the historical characteristics of Swedish working life, which we argue is characterized by five features: change and innovation; participation and union influence; consensus and open dialogue between levels and parties; autonomous work groups and; value based management. Second, we discuss to what extent the Swedish model has prevailed and, third, argue that much of that which is hailed as new forms of management already exist in Sweden, but is presented as part of individually and culturally based Swedish management rather than the Swedish model. Swedish managers and to a lesser extent Swedish culture is thereby given credit for conditions that result from union negotiations and broader labour market struggles: it is the (Swedish) managers that, by practicing Swedish styles of management, are to celebrate for state of the art management systems and ultimately Sweden's current economic success. The Swedish model and the unions are thereby rendered superfluous.
In the 1980s and 1990s, political leaders in Western democracies used management and managerialism to initiate change. The result was privatization, deregulation, public cost-cutting programs and a greater influence of business leaders and managerial principles in politics and public administration. This change was possible because management itself had transformed from a systems approach to a more personal approach, which made the manager the symbolic figurehead of organizational change and success. Management and rock star CEOs became a big hit in popular culture. An in-depth analysis of the Dutch case shows that political leaders explicitly and purposely presented themselves as managers and were perceived as such. These ‘managers in politics’, (prime) ministers and chairmen of political parties transformed their organizations in a managerial way. By focusing on Dutch environmental policy, we establish that this transformation effected the content of environmental policy. Around 2000, the manager steadily lost his/her attractiveness as he/she was held responsible for economic decline and governmental problems. A new political language, influenced by the experiences with management in the 1980s and 1990s, was introduced. Entrepreneurship instead of managerialism, value-driven politics instead of ‘no nonsense’ business talk and ‘emotional’ instead of ‘rational’ management models became popular. This article thus argues that more attention should be paid to the historical change of management in the 1980s and 1990s; that this change should be understood as a linguistic change first that, however, initiated a change of practices; and that concentrating on politics, public administration and popular culture provides a new understanding of the kind of management change that took place.
Pål Nygaard Professional Autonomy versus Corporate Control
2012
Professionalism and bureaucracy tend to be understood as incompatible systems of work organization, represented by the ideals of collegiality and autonomy versus control and supervision. I present a historical case study from early 20th century Norway examining the potential clash between efforts made toward professionalization and bureaucratization in industry. Based on my findings, I argue that there is neither an inherent conflict between professionalism and bureaucracy nor static national trajectories at the level of professional versus bureaucratic work organization.
Modernism and the dominating firm—on the managerial mentality of the Swedish model
Scandinavian Journal of Management, 1991
Rationalism, modernism and managerial thought dominate action in Swedish social life. The study of management education provides a way of understanding the workings of the Swedish model. Swedish managerialism is reproducing old collectivist and corporativist values with German rather than Anglo-Saxon intellectual roots. The task of the manager is to realize capitalism without capitalists. The concept of the "firm" has taken on the meaning today that was previously given to "Nature" or "People". Families and the state are both simply seen as different types of firm, to be run by loyal managers. This Swedish version of the "firm" has therefore become a dominant institution, entrenched in a mentality beyond political facts and fashions.
In search of Nordic management styles
Scandinavian Journal of Management, 2003
Previously published studies have indicated some distinctive aspects of Nordic management. Nordic managers have been consistently reported as individualistic but also more 'feminine' and employee-oriented, than those further south. In the present study, the ways in which managers from the five Nordic nations describe their role are compared with descriptions provided by managers from 42 other nations. Managers from each nation were asked to describe the degree to which they relied on each of eight sources of guidance in handling a series of everyday work events. Nordic managers reported relying more on subordinates and peers and less on formal rules and superiors than did other European managers. However, marked contrasts were also found between the Nordic manager samples. Predictions are derived from the results as to the types of difficulty most likely to occur within different Nordic collaborations. r
Historical Discourses of Public Management in Denmark
The management phenomenon does not simply arise out of nothing. It has emerged against the background of a protracted process that has gradually created the conditions for that which we now refer to as 'management'.This article investigates the construction of the concept of management in the Danish public sector in the 20th century, revealing a transformation of the concept characterized by four different discourses that have rendered management a question of bureaucratic control, efficient rationalization, sectoral planning and, finally, professional management. The article accounts for the particular time-dependent conceptions that inform our knowledge of the past and contribute to our understanding of contemporary semantic possibilities for management. By this means, the article sheds new light on the emergence of public management from the past and the challenges it faces in the present.