The Professor of Management: The Academy of Management and Professionalism.

The subject of this paper is the relationship of the Academy of Management to the profession of management. Its purpose is to explain some of the reasons for our reorganization within the Academy and to suggest directions for the future. First, let us review what has been happening in the Academy. The last year witnessed a significant reorganization. Underlying these changes was the philosophy that as an Academy we must provide professional services for our members! These members, traditionally, are professors of management. Although we have increased the number of executive members significantly, we still have 90 percent academics as members. Due to the nature of the training for academic life, many of the younger men have been weak or lacking in direct contact with the world of work. Because of this their teaching is apt to be sterile. Personally, I am convinced that the gestaltists such as Wertheimer and Lewin were correct. Namely, much of the learning of the skills of management involves subtle processes which can best be achieved by direct experience and involvement. Most of us are perceptually rather than conceptually oriented. We have to experience things first before we can understand them. Thus, we have seen as an important function of the Academy of Management the provision of avenues for bringing professors into direct contact with the world of "reality". Namely, we have organized to help provide dialogue between practitioners and academics. The profession of management is crowded with moral hazards. If we are to truly be a profession, we must face these directly and develop our own code of ethics and moral guidelines. This is a tremendously difficult task and ultimately it is the kind of a thing that each of us has to do for himself However, if management is truly to be a profession. it must have the ethical guidelines which are so essential for professional behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]