Download PDF Ambition, AMBA's magazine, Oct Dec2010
Do we need management guilds? Dean Santiago Iniguez' contribution in Ambition, AMBA's magazine.
(Ambition is the quarterly newsletter from the Association of MBAs that keeps our members – international alumni and students from our accredited schools – informed about their activities and MBA-relevant updates and articles. See how you could reach this audience by advertising in the next Ambition.)
The tantalizing idea of professionalizing management
Historically, management has never attained the status of a formal profession, in the sense of setting up a guild or association by managers. In large part, the reason why there are no managers’ guilds is due to the flexibility and presence of management throughout such a wide range of activities. Would it really make much sense for the head of a hospital’s surgery department, the partner-director of a law firm, the founder of a high-tech start-up company, and the CEO of a consumer products manufacturer to create their own guild or any other type of association? They are all managers, and it may be that some of them have MBAs, but their shared professional interests would not extend much beyond ideas on how best to manage a budget or to motivate their workforce. In all likelihood, they are going to be more interested in learning all there is to know about their respective professions— medicine, architecture, law—and applying these techniques, tools, and ideas on management within the framework of these professions...
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