VOL. 56, No. 7 HEAD OFFICE: MONTREAL, JULY 1975

Business Management as a Profession

MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS have expanded like the mush-room shaped cloud that has become symbolic ofthis nuclear age.

It is clear to all who are willing to look that inevery form of activity in a free society there must beleadership that is creatively conceived and voluntarilyaccepted by those it leads. New and enhanced powersof insight and capability for action are needed. Thebusiness manager must see some hand-breadthsdeeper than others into the increasing problems anduncertainties of life, business and society.

His is a vocation which he has chosen for reasons ofhis special natural fitness. He has prepared for it byacquiring expert knowledge which he will increaseby study and practice. He finds his reward in his loveof the work he does, the meeting of challenges, andthe distinction he achieves by his application ofintelligently-directed skill.

Whether what he does is called a profession or a jobdoes not matter much to a zealous business manager.After all, the distinction between crafts and pro-fessions is not clear-cut. Alfred North Whitehead said :"In all stages of civilization, crafts are shot throughand through with flashes of constructive under-standing and professions are based upon inheritedprocedures."

Foresight based upon theory, and theory based uponunderstanding of the nature of things, are equallynecessary in business management and the learnedprofessions.

A full-fledged profession is a vocation in which theseconditions exist: it demands that practitioners acquirean intellectually based technique; that they assume arelationship of responsibility toward clients; that theyare organized into responsible associations which setstandards for admission to practise and exercisecontrol over the action of their members throughcodes of ethics.

President W. E. Wickenden, of the Case School ofApplied Science, went a step further when he describedthe obligations of a professional person. Speakingbefore the Engineering Institute of Canada, he saidthat every calling has its mile of compulsory work, but:

"Beyond this lies the mile of voluntary effort, wheremen strive for excellence, give unrequited service tothe good, and seek to invest their words with a wideand enduring significance. It is only in tiffs second milethat a calling may attain to the dignity and thedistinction of a profession."

Three forms of control

We live in a mixed economy in which control bycompetition, by governmental regulation and by self-regulation are combined. While the first two aregenerally viewed as desirable in our present state ofevolution, many people in business yearn for a higherstatus, one in which business may attain profes-sionalism by self-regulation.

The concept of professionalism implies, essentially,a particular form of control over the conduct of thepractitioner. This control is through voluntary codeswhich have been formulated by his equals in rank withprimary concern for the public interest and which areenforced by these same peers.

No one in professional life can escape these regu-latory conditions, nor can he avoid the obligation tocontribute to the advancement of his group. His ownknowledge is part of a common fund, built up overthe centuries, a fund to which he is obligated to add.

The growth of trade associations, better businessbureaus, chambers of commerce and service clubssuggests that business is in the process of developingprofessional associations similar to those in thetraditional professions.

The place of business

Business is a many-sided phenomenon. A dictionaryclassifies it as any gainful occupation of which profitis the goal and in which there is risk of loss. It includesthe production and sale of goods, their transportationand their financing; and the performing of servicesthat contribute to the well-being and the life-styles ofpeople. The earning of profit is something more thanthe accumulation of wealth: it is an essential conditionof success and its absence means the firm’s failure.

In most parts of the world industrialization, whichis the application of non-human power to machinery,has meant an advance in material civilization, a risein the standards of living, an improved status andgreater political power for the working classes: it hasbettered health, lengthened life, lessened laborioustoil, and brought with it greater leisure.

After his retirement in 1937 from his post as head ofthe Department of Political Economy in the Univer-sity of Toronto, the late Professor E. J. Urwick wrotea series of essays, published after his death as TheValues of Life (University of Toronto Press, 1948).In his essay on "Progress", he wrote: "There couldhave been no advance from the brutish existence ofprimitive man without increase of material wherewithto equip a better life, due in turn to increase ofknowledge and inventiveness."

Many men and women have found themselves at aloss to know what role was expected of them. Businesshas neither the mystique nor the canons and preceptsof the learned professions, and yet a person in businessis judged not alone by his knowledge of business butalso by his superior mental acuteness and discern-ment, his keen insight, and the way he lives.

The manager is the impresario of industry, uponwhom rests the weight of responsibility for the statusof business. University schools of commerce trainpeople in all the sciences underlying business, and aretending toward inculcating a professional attitude inthe socially desirable aspects, of their calling.

Management qualities

As in any occupation, there are two considerationswhen matching a person and a management job: thefitness of the place for the person and the fitness of theperson for the place.

Everyone aspiring to an administrative post isrequired to have high integrity, positive dependability,skill in co-ordinating, persistence in performing andself-confidence.

Competence must combine thoroughness andproficiency. There is nothing that will take the placeof expert knowledge, technical skill and trained vision,Whether in a learned profession or in business, aperson is only as good as his performance provesthat he is.

Responsibility is a necessary quality. The top levelexecutive, like the top level professional person, cannever escape from it. By "responsible" is meant thecapability to distinguish right from wrong, and alsoaccountability, both legal and moral, for actions takenand actions not taken.

Knowledge must be applied with intelligence. Thisis an age in which we have to stretch our minds. Com-plex business organization requires the intellectualadventure of analysis and the imaginative bringingtogether of many factors and ideas. To conquer dif-ficulties and solve problems, to triumph over opposi-tion and obstacles: these are possible only when yourreflective processes are given a chance to flourish.

In Business and the Man, first of the AlexanderHamilton Institute modern business texts, which hasbecome widely recognized as a business classic, DeanJoseph French Johnson had this to say: "On theintellectual side, the top executive has need of anorderly and ’scientific’ type of mind. At the same time,he should possess a vivid, constructive imagination, anintuitive knowledge of men, and a personality whichmakes others rally to him as a leader."

These qualities are not beyond the power of youngmen and women to cultivate. No one needs to feelfenced in. There is always a frontier in business forthe person with an open mind, an ideal, ambitionand determination.

Both business and the professions would dry upwithout leaders who believe in ideas, because in anycalling an achievement is first of all a conceptdeveloped by the mind. Dr. Hans Selye, Director ofthe Institute of Experimental Medicine and Surgery atthe Universit6 de Montr6al, pointed this up in theextraordinarily fitting title of his book on the work ofhis lifetime. He called it FROM DREAM TO DIS-COVERY. It was published by McGraw-Hill BookCompany in 1964.

A profession is more than a set of rules and pro-cedures that depend upon experience or observationalone. It organizes a body of ideas and develops theminto knowledge in accordance with a special point ofview, and provides a framework for action andresearch.

New ideas about things and about behaviour areknocking at our doors every year. The starting pointsfor debatlng societies today, the self-evident truthsupon which the debaters build thbir arguments, wouldhave appeared as startling innovations tb people offifty years ago.

Encompassed as he is by these r~ew thoughts, thebusiness manager must be able to discriminate. He candiagnose unfamiliar circumstances because he isproficient in his knowledge of similarities and dif-ferences. He has the ability to iSolate essential factsfrom the complications in which they are embedded.He is able to draw thihgs together. He makes a wiredecision with iregard to operations when he hasevaluated the problem in terms of sales policy, publicrelations, financial implications, and other phases ofhis business.

What leadership requires

Leadership in any business or profession meansinitiative -- getting an operation off the ground, carry-ing it through in spite of discouragement, and wrappingit up. This demands a constellation of personalityqualifications and motivations.

Positions of leadership are won by strongly in-dividualistic persons who have acquired the skills andattitudes necessary in their field of endeavour. Thetrue business person has vision, self-confidence,venturesomeness, curiosity and judgment. He corn-

bines the qualities of the dreamer and the practicalbuilder. The professional person’s special characteristicis his ability to assimilate, integrate and evaluate thenecessary data and come up with the correct answer.

Being a leader has many compensations, but it is ahard job, and often a lonely job. It is incorrect tothink that an executive can always make the right de-cisions if he is surrounded by a sufficient number ofexpert advisers. He must be able to distinguish anddefine the possible lines of action among which he hasthe responsibility of making a choice, realizing thathe is in a position where action or abstention fromaction affects many people. Managers and people inthe learned professions have to be their own inspectorsand critics.

The manager is the person behind the mechanismof business. He can be an idealist in purpose and arealist in action. Sound administration of a law office,a factory or a medical practice is the product ofmaturity--mature imagination, mature perceptionand judgment, mature human interests and values.

Wherever his lot may be cast and whatever hisspecial qualities may be, every person has the rightand duty to become all he can become. At the basis ofevery profession that is worthy of the title there is thegoal of excellence.

One must progress. To advance in skill and author-ity does not mean that one reaches an end. It brings aclearer vision of more things to be attained. Theperson who does not keep up with the times, or, rather,anticipate the future, will soon be obsolete. Collegecourses and textbool~s are entitled "Managers. forTomorrow". One does not see advertisements formanagers of the status quo.

Education for business

A general education, which is a process of cultiva-tion of the mind, is sound preparation for a career inbusiness. It is not enough to know only what isneeded for a particular job if you plan to~ do itmasterfully.

It is characteristic of all professions that theydemand of their members and practitioners a broad’and deep universal education rather than a narrowand specialized training.

Professions have arisen by carving out of the com-mon occupations of men who work with their brainssome special field to which they devote their attention.These have been among the greatest agencies incivilization, and as human society becomes morecomplex it produces new professions which help itto advance.

Increasing numbers of young men and youngwomen with good general education are preparingthemselves for the special requirements of managerialroles by studying in schools of business, and more andmore junior executives are preparing themselves forpositions of greater responsibility by attendance at the

many institutes, night classes and company trainingprogrammes now being provided.

Schools of commerce and business administrationare founded upon the belief that principles underlie thesubject, capable of being worked out inductively fromthe results of observation, comparison and reflection;capable also of being taught, especially by the solutionof problems in which these principles are involved.This is one of the underlying principles of all therecognized professions, and it is evident that businessis moving toward professional stature.

At the dedication of new buildings of the HarvardBusiness School in 1927, Owen D. Young, Chairman ofthe Board of the General Electric Company, said:’+Today and here business formally assumes theobligations of a profession, which means responsibleaction as a group, devotion to its own ideals, thecreation of its own codes, the capacity for its owndiscipline, the awards of its own honours, and theresponsibility for its own service."

That strong statement of purpose and expectationepitomizes the hope of business managers. To know,to get into the truth of things, is a mystic act carryingwith it a new concepi of the possibilities in a job. Toknow the principles that govern a proposition, and tounderstand the place of the proposition in the broadscheme of things, builds self-confidence, self-relianceand self-respect.

The effects upon our mental life of having wideknowledge have been many and various. The simplestknowledge is the result of complex processes. Even inseeing an apple fall. from a tree, whether one isprompted to discover a law like Newton’s or not, oneuses every mental power: sensation, emotion, will,memory, perception, and thought.

A thoroughgoing professional-type educationprovides you with a compass and a readable map andsufficient general landmarks to find your way throughlife, to calculate risks with safety, to form plans, toallocate resources and to conduct operations.

There are to be found some self-satisfied personswho boast that they pay no attention to knowledgethat is not functional in their vocation. Such people arenarrow in their outlook and limited in their attain-ments. The business manager who knows nothing butdebit and credit, input and output, can be as hamperedin his prospects as a university man who knowsnothing but Greek and Latin, and no authorities butAristotle and Seneca. The art of management, even inan industry that rests for its success on the achieve-ments of the scientist and the engineer, requires abroadly cultivated mind.

There comes a period in life, early to some, later toothers, when a person senses his lack of familiaritywith history, philosophy, great literature, fine arts ormusic. Acquaintance with these is needed to round offthe sharp edges and fill in the gaps in a businessmanager’s knowledge of the precision tools of hisdaily work.

Professional ethics

In any life activity where we have to exercise choice,and to prefer this to that of two possible acts, it isnecessary to have a distinction of good and bad, orat least of better and worse. Ethics is the science whichseeks to determine these.

It is the collective expression of high ethical stan-dards for the individual that is the foundation for theprofessional standards of people acting in groups.This is a higher conception than mere compliancewith regulatory statutes and criminal laws. RalphWaldo Emerson said: "Every man takes care that hisneighbour does not cheat him. But a day comes whenhe begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbour.Then all goes well."

Getting ahead in the business world can be entirelyconsistent with following the soundest and mostethical rules for successful living. There is no intrinsicdifference between business ethics and ethics ingeneral. The moral standards that should governpeople’s behaviour ought to apply to their actions inbusiness. The essence of practical ethics is found in theGolden Rule: in business this law finds expressionin "the square deal".

Many businesses have followed the lead of thelearned professions by working out effective codes ofethics designed to improve their business practices.Trade associations have developed and strengthenedthese codes over the years.

There can be no substitute in any area of humanactivity for the person of integrity. This applies to themanager of a factory, a sales force, a financial institu-tion, a trade union or any other business. The wordsassociated with integrity in the dictionary are: moralsoundness, honesty, freedom from corrupting in-fluence or practice, strictness in the fulfillment ofcontracts and in the discharge of trusts.

Sir John Maud, who served as high commissionerfor the United Kingdom in South Africa, said in aradio address: "Though we may rightly try to be ’allthings to all men’, what really matters, surely, is thatwe should be one man to all men. That is what theman of integrity is."

Dealing with people

Business is a human organization that touches thelives and welfare of many people. A business executiveis not evaluated by his office ability alone--thehandling of papers and the direction of operations.His worth includes his capacity to understand and getalong with all kinds of people.

Mechanical problems are relatively simple comparedwith human problems. They can usually be solved byknown rules or passed on to technicians. The onlycertain way to deal with people individually or in themass- and their behaviour differs in many startlingways- is to develop a continuing and orderly inter-change of ideas with them.

ALSO AVAILABLE IN FRENCH AND IN BRAILLE

A talent for communication is valuable. Themanager encounters every day the necessity for theadequate communication of ideas. He must be ableto write and speak with clarity and felicity.

Rewards of management

Dignity, a basic human need, is essential in the lifeof a business manager, just as it is in the learned pro-fessions. It must be earned dignity, for a dignity thathas to be contended for is not worth having.

The evidences of power and rank are normalincentives in business life. Status is public or it isnothing, so there must be some way of giving itpublic expression. It has symbols that demonstratethat a person has qualities that are valued by hisfellow man.

Titles are not decorative status symbols: theyshould indicate and imply responsibility for dis-charging duties. Every professional man earns histitle and continues to earn it throughout his career,and his title carries with it honour and respect. Aperson does not enhance a job by giving it a fancyname but by doing the job in an excellent way.

Service to society

The motivation of service to society is the hallmarkof a true profession, and discussion of the socialresponsibility of business is commonplace in leadingbusiness circles.

A corporation is not merely an association of stock-holders who have combined to do something. It is alsoan instrumentality for social progress. The manager isresponsible for expressing the good citizenship of hisfirm, and executives must weigh the public con-sequences of their decisions.

President Wickenden said in his lecture: "Pro-fessional status is an implied contract to serve societyin consideration of the honour, rights and protectionsociety extends to the profession. Through all pro-fessional relations runs a threefold thread of account-ability, to colleagues, to clients and to the public."

R. H. Tawney of Oxford said in The AcquisitiveSociety (Harcourt Brace & Howe, 1920): "The work making boots or building a house is itself no moredegrading than that of curing the sick or teaching theignorant. It is as necessary and therefore as honour-able. It should be at least equally bound by ruleswhich have as their object to maintain the standardsof professional service. It should be at least equallyfree from the vulgar subordination of moral standardsto financial interests."

It does not really matter what one’s vocation iscalled, trade, job, business or profession. What doesmatter is that we have found the part we are to play,that we are doing the work for which we are bestendowed, that we are filling a vital need and that weare meeting our obligations.

THE ROYAL BANK OF CANADA 1975/PRINTED IN CANADA