Effective managing therefore happens where art, craft
Because engineering and medicine have so much codi-
and science meet. But in a classroom of students without
fied knowledge that must be learned formally, the trained
managerial experience, these have no place to meet ‘
expert can almost always outperform the layperson. Not
there is nothing to do. Linda Hill (1992) writes in her book
so in management. Few of us would trust the intuitive en-
about people becoming managers that they ‘had to act
gineer or physician, with no formal training. Yet we trust all
as managers before they understood what the role was’
kinds of managers who have never spent a day in a ma-
[2]. In other words, where there is no experience, there is
nagement classroom (and we have suspicions about
no room for craft: Inexperienced students simply cannot
some others who spent two years there).
understand the practice. As for art, nothing stops that from being discussed, even admired, in the conventional MBA classroom. But the inexperience of the students stops it from being appreciated. They can only look on as non-artists do ‘ observing it without understanding how
Ever since the 1910s when Frederick Taylor (1911) [5] wrote about that ‘one best way’ and Henri Fayol (1916/1984) [6] claimed that ‘managerial ability can and should be acquired in the same way as technical ability at
it came to be.
school, later in the workshop’, we have been in this se-
That leaves science, which is what conventional MBA edu-
profession. In Britain, a group called the Management
cation is mostly about, at least in the form of analysis. So
Charter Initiative sought to barrel ahead with the certifi-
conventional MBA students graduate with the impression
cation of managers, not making the case for manage-
that management is analysis, specifically the making of
ment as a profession so much as assuming it. As its
systematic decisions and the formulation of deliberate
director told a newspaper, the MBA ‘is the only truly glo-
strategies. This is a narrow and ultimately distorted view
bal qualification, the only license to trade internationally’
of management that has encouraged two dysfunctional
(Watts 1997:43) [7].
styles in practice: calculating (overly analytical) and heroic (pretend art). These are later contrasted with a more experienced-based style labelled engaging ‘ quiet and connected, involving and inspiring.
arch for the holy grail of management as a science and a
The statement is nonsense, and the group has failed in those efforts. It is time to face a fact: After almost a century of trying, by any reasonable assessment management has become neither a science nor a profession. It remains deeply embedded in the practices of everyday li-
Management is not a profession It has been pointed out that engineering, too, is not a science or an applied science so much as a practice in its own right (Lewin 1979) [3]. But engineering does apply a good deal of science, codified and certified as to its effectiveness. And so it can be called a profession, which means it can be taught in advance of practice, out of context. In a sense, a bridge is a bridge, or at least steel is steel, even if its use has to be adapted to the circumstances at hand. The same can be said about medicine: many illnesses are codified as standard syndromes to be treated by specific techniques. But that cannot be said of management (Whitley 1995:92) [4]. Little of its practice has been reliably codified, let alone certified as to its effectiveness. So management cannot be called a profession or taught as such.
ving. We should be celebrating that fact, not depreciating it. And we should be developing managers who are deeply embedded in the life of leading, not professionals removed from it. Those fields of work discussed earlier can be divided into ones in which the person doing it truly ‘knows better’ than the recipients and others in which acting as the expert who knows better can get in the way. Upon being wheeled into an operating room, few of us would be inclined to second-guess the surgeon. (‘Could you cut a little lower, please?’) No matter how miserable the bedside manner, we accept that he or she knows better. But a schoolteacher who acts on the basis of knowing better can impede the learning of the student. School teaching is a facilitation activity, more about encouraging learning than doing teaching. Managing is largely a facilitating activity, too. Sure, maManagement of public organisations | 17