Academic Knowledge and Work Jurisdiction in Management

Abstract

Relations between formal, academic knowledge, training in high-level expertise and practical problem-solving activities vary considerably across fields of practice, as well as across societies. Four major kinds of skills development, certification and extent of jurisdictional control over tasks and jobs can be distinguished: craft professional, academic professional, contested academic and research based. Most academically credentialed managerial skills are similar to contested academic skills. These variations in types of skill formation and jurisdiction result from differences in dominant institutions and characteristics of fields of practice. Of particular importance are: the extent of professional élite power, state licensing, the prestige of modern science and of universities, the level of student demand, the nature of the employment system and labour-market organization and the contextual dependence of problems and issues. Academics in some managerial fields have extended their jurisdictional control in some countries by developing technical skills for dealing with complex, yet well-bounded and general, kinds of problems involving quantitative information.

From Factories to Shops: Deconstruction of Scientific Knowledge Without a Client

“…In terms of science production and diffusion, the definition of what should be investigated and taught, with exception of the applied sciences, has never had too much influence, either from the university administration or from external constituencies, such as the students, practitioners, government or industry. However, it is also true that scientific knowledge generated and diffused by universities has never been fully autonomous in the sense that syllabuses contents and the definition of professional skills and evaluation have to be shared with other agents in society like the State or employers and professional groups (WHITLEY 1995).…”

“…The degree of autonomy will depend on the kind of problems it addresses: if more concrete or abstract in nature, on the extent to which the profession is institutionalised and if that university training is recognised as important by society (WHITLEY 1995). When the nature of knowledge is concrete in a context where professional institutionalisation is low, if university training is not recognised as being important, and if there is high demand for enrolment, academic autonomy can be reasonable but could still be influenced by pressures from practitioners (WHITLEY 1995). In general the more a field of knowledge is grounded on research activities, and the more it is based on formal abstract knowledge, the more the academics are able to define the contents of their task and to lay dawn the rules for their own performance evaluation.…”

“…The underlying logic has been one in which research knowledge provides inputs directly applied to managerial jobs, a linear model that has developed after the World War II. The assumption underlying this model was that managers should acquire managerial qualifications or improve their skills by going into university training (WHITLEY 1995). Some implications for this model can be drawn out of the discussion in the previous sections.…”

“…Management has been defined as an area of knowledge where barriers to entry are low and exit is high (WHITLEY 1995). In education terms this means that an increasing number of schools and institutions of higher education are creating new business schools and are opening new business areas in these schools.…”

“…Management is also a discipline highly connected with problem solving activities at the work place where employers are very powerful in defining the content of managers' responsibilities and assessment. The relevance of practical experience creates room for a dispute about which organization is able to deliver the appropriate training in the acquisition of professional skills, if universities, or firms themselves (WHITLEY 1995). Up to a given point, certain types of may be management knowledge easy to codify judging by the number of distant training adverts, which are now frequent in newspaper sections about job and courses offers.…”