About

The Profession of Management: Is Management a Profession?

Synopsis

In the nineteenth century, the list of learned professions expanded to include commercial activities such as accountancy and banking as well as law and medicine, characterised by the study of a required body of knowledge, a period of apprenticeship, and a code of ethics specific to the professional activity. Reforms began the process of establishing public sector management as a professional activity.

In the first half of the twentieth century, serious attempts were made by business leaders and policymakers to establish management as a profession, with the establishment of business schools, graduate training schemes, and the emergence of accepted ethical standards.

In this lecture, Sir John Kay will argue that from around 1970 that drive to managerial professionalism went into reverse, and that this reversal led to the decline of many successful twentieth century corporations, a loss of legitimacy by large business, and contributed to an erosion of professional standards in business adjacent professions, especially banking, accountancy and law.

Is this diagnosis well founded? And what could or should be done in response by both business and political leaders?

About Sir John Kay
Sir John Anderson Kay, CBE, FRSE, FBA, FAcSS (born 1948) is a British economist. He was the first dean of Oxford's Saïd Business School and has held chairs at the London School of Economics, the University of Oxford, and London Business School. He has been a fellow of St John's College, Oxford, since 1970.

He is a regular columnist and editorial contributor to the Financial Times.