《哈佛商业评论》专家论点管理,并不是一种职业.doc

哈佛商业评论专家论点：管理，并不是一种职业/view/162355/124852用了整整一周的业余时间将这篇文章译了出来，文章从许多方面论证了“管理并不是一种职业”，看完之后确实让人有醍醐灌顶的感觉，学管理出身的我才发现原来管理真的不是一种职业！（PS：翻译完要发布的时候才发现站上已经有这篇文章了，只能跟着lionbang的屁股后发这篇文章了，大家可以对比着看，随时欢迎献花与拍砖！呵呵）管理，并不是一种职业 by Richard Barker作者：Richard BarkerIt is natural to view management as a profession. Managers status is similar to that of doctors or lawyers, as is their obligation to contribute to the well-being of society. Managers can also be formally trained and qualified, notably by earning an MBA. If management is a profession, the business school is a professional school.人们一般认为，管理是一种职业，而经理人的地位类似于医生或律师，他们都对社会做出了杰出的贡献。经理人大多进行过系统学习和正规训练，个别优秀的会有MBA学位。如果我们把管理看成是一种职业的话，那么“商学院”就和“职业学校”没有分别了。That perception has fueled criticism of business schools during the recent economic crisis. They have come under fire for allegedly failing in their obligation to educate socially responsible business leaders. The same perception has informed the schools response, which has been to work toward greater professionalism. Writing in the June 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review, Joel Podolny, a former dean of the Yale School of Management, argued, “An occupation earns the right to be a profession only when some ideals, such as being an impartial counsel, doing no harm, or serving the greater good, are infused into the conduct of people in that occupation. In like vein, a school becomes a professional school only when it infuses those ideals into its graduates.这种看法在最近的经济危机中招致了许多批评，责怪那些商学院没有培养出具备社会责任感的商界领袖。同样，越来越职业化的学校也对这种看法做出了回应，耶鲁大学管理学院前院长Joel Podolny在2009年6月的哈佛商业评论上的一篇文章里这样说道：“一种职业之所以被称之为职业，是因为（所提出的）一些想法可以获得公众行为准则的认可，比如一位公正的律师，不仅可以服务大众，而且对社会无害。就像血管一样，只有学生们接受了那些想法，学校才有可能变得更加职业化。”Podolny is in sympathy with Harvard Business School professors Rakesh Khurana and Nitin Nohria, who argued in the October 2008 issue of HBR that it was time to make management a true profession. In their view, “True professions have codes of conduct, and the meaning and consequences of those codes are taught as part of the formal education of their members.” Yet, they wrote, “unlike doctors and lawyers,” managers dont “adhere to a universal and enforceable code of conduct.”Podolny和哈佛商学院教授Rakesh Khurana与Nitin Nohria的观点一致，他们在发表于2008年10月哈佛商业评论的文章中谈到已经是时候将管理变成一种真正的职业了，在他们看来，“真正的职业有自己的行为准则，而从事这项职业的人一定接受过关于这些准则的含义与重要性的教育”，他们还说，“与医生和律师不同”，经理人不会“局限于那些普遍的、可执行的行为准则”。These calls to professionalism are hardly new. Writing in the very first issue of HBR, in 1922, HBS professor John Gurney Callan claimed, “Business.may be thought of as a profession and we may profitably spend a good deal of time in considering what is the best professional training for those who are to take important executive positions in the coming generation.”其实这种关于“职业”的说法早就不新鲜了，在1922年，哈佛商学院教授John Gurney Callan在哈佛商业评论上就声称：“企业管理或许应该被称为是一种职业，我们要用大部分时间来考虑如何为那些将要身居管理要职的人们提供最好的职业训练！”A. Lawrence Lowell, the president of Harvard University, was even more assertive in his 1923 HBR essay “The Profession of Business” (adapted from his address to the incoming class at HBS the previous September). He attributed the very creation of HBS to the emergence of business management as a distinct profession.哈佛大学校长A.Lawrence Lowell在1923年哈佛商业评论上的评论文章企业管理中的职业（改编自他1922年9月的讲课内容）中的态度更加自信，他认为哈佛商学院独具创造性地把企业管理培养成了一种明确的职业。In contrast with these views, I will argue that management is not a profession at all and can never be one. Therefore, business schools are not professional schools. Moreover, laudable and beguiling though professional standards and ethics may be, and however appealing professional status is, hanging the mantle “professional” on business education fosters inappropriate analysis and misguided prescriptions.和这些看法相反，我认为管理不是一种职业，并且永远不会是；同时，商学院也不是职业学校；此外，不管如何来判定职业道德的好坏，职业地位有多么诱人，打着“职业化”名头的企业管理教育只会培养出错误的分析与解决办法。Lets begin by examining what actually constitutes a profession.下面，我们先来看一看“职业”是怎么构成的。What Is a Profession?什么是职业？ Professions are made up of particular categories of people from whom we seek advice and services because they have knowledge and skills that we do not. A doctor, for example, can recommend a course of treatment for an illness; a lawyer can advise us on a course of legal action. We cannot make these judgments ourselvesand often we cannot judge the quality of the advice we receive. The Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow wrote about the medical profession, “The value of information is frequently not known in any meaningful sense to the buyer; if, indeed, he knew enough to measure the value of information, he would know the information itself. But information, in the form of skilled care, is precisely what is being bought from most physicians, and, indeed, from most professionals.”职业由一群特定的、可以为我们提供意见或服务的人组成，这些人拥有我们所没有的知识和技能，举例来说，医生可以告诉我们如何对疾病进行治疗；律师可以告诉我们如何进行诉讼，而我们对这些事无法做出自己的判断，同时也无从得知所得到建议的质量。诺贝尔奖得主Kenneth Arrow是这样描述医学类职业的，“对于（医疗）信息的价值，一般的消费者（患者）完全不知道它的意义所在，如果他知道如何去衡量信息的价值，那他一定对信息本身相当了解，但据一些医疗护理信息显示，专业化程度越高的医生，会越受到患者的青睐。”It is true, of course, that most nonprofessional providers of goods and services also have knowledge that we dont. We cannot, for instance, manufacture a computer or operate a train service. Nevertheless, we can judge whether or not our demand has been met: We know what to expect from our computer, and we know if our train is delayed. The difference is that we might act on a lawyers advice and not know its quality, even after the case has been completed. Perhaps she gave us good advice but the case was lost, or vice versa. The outcome might have been more or less favorable had her advice been different. We are in no position to know, because the professional is the expert and we are not. There is an asymmetry of knowledge.这当然是事实，即便是那些商品和服务的提供商也拥有很多我们所没有的知识，比如制造一台电脑或者提供“一条龙服务”，可我们可以判断他们是否能满足我们的要求比如对电脑性能的要求，对火车准时性的要求等等。但律师行业有所不同，我们可能会遵照某个律师的建议，但是却无法得知这些建议是否合理，即便案子已经结束。或许会出现这样的情况：她给我们提供了非常好的建议，但是却输了案子，反之亦然，最终的结果可能会因为她意见的不同而大相径庭，但我们却不知道其中的原因（知识的不对称），就是因为这是他们的职业。In some cases the knowledge asymmetry is relatively transient. A taxi driver in a foreign town provides us with a service, using his knowledge of the local geography. Once we arrive at our destination, however, we can ask a local whether the drivers route was the most direct, and thus reduce the asymmetry. But who evaluates legal advice for us? Although we could ask another lawyer, he couldnt offer a second opinion without being informed of the details of our casewhich would amount to hiring two lawyers to do the work of one. Furthermore, the two lawyers might advise us differently, and wed be unable to distinguish the better advice.在某些情况下，知识不对称是相对暂时的。比如在国外的某个小镇上，一位出租车司机依靠自己的乡土地理知识为我们提供服务，当我们到达目的地的时候，我们会问当地的居民那位司机所走的路是不是最近的，以此来降低知识的不对称性。但是又有谁来为我们来评估那些“法律意见”呢？我们倒是可以咨询一下其他的律师，但他是不可能给予我们额外意见的，因为一个案子只能请一个律师，而他并不是这个案子所指定的正式律师。此外，两个律师有可能会给我们提供截然相反的建议，而我们却无法分辨出哪个是更好的。In practice, our lawyer herself implicitly assures us that we can rely on the legal advice she is giving. This relatively permanent knowledge asymmetry is the mark of the true profession; as consumers, we have no option but to trust the professionals with whom we transact. Nevertheless, we might be unwilling to transact at all without some guarantee that the services we receive meet a minimum quality threshold. That requires the existence of professional bodies, whose regulatory role enables consumers to trust their advisers, thereby making a market for professional services feasible.在实际中，律师会向我们保证可以相信她所提出的法律意见，这种相对持久的“知识不对称性”是“职业”的一个显要标志，对于消费者来说，除了相信这些专业人士之外别无选择。不过，我们大都不会与那些连最低的服务质量都无法保证的人达成合作，这就需要那些专业机构促使消费者相信他们的意见，从而使“专业服务市场”保持繁荣。For a professional body in any given field to function, a discrete body of knowledge for that field must be defined, and the fields boundaries must be established: When, for example, is something a medical or legal issue, and when is it not? There must also be a reasonable consensus within the field as to what the knowledge should consist of: If physicians cannot agree on how the human body functions, or lawyers on the nature of a contract, no discrete body of knowledge can be said to exist. The boundaries and consensus for any profession will evolve over time, but at any given moment they can be definedwhich is what enables formal training and certification. Certification signals competence to consumers who would benefit from it.对于任何一个领域里的专业机构的职能，我们一定要对这些“知识分支”加以界定，让其与其它的领域划清界限，比如某件事究竟属于医疗问题还是法律问题？同时，对于这个领域内应有的知识内容，大家应该达成一致如果医生对人体的各项功能意见不一，或者律师对合同性质的见解不一样等等，那么这些知识的分支就没有存在的必要了。对于各个行业的界定都在随着时间的推移而趋于一致，一旦它们被定义下来，那么就需要进行正式的培训和认证了，而所谓的“认证”就是告诉消费者谁有能力做好这件事（而从中赢利）。Professional bodies hold a trusted position. They have, in effect, a contract with society at large: They control membership in the professions through examination and certification, maintain the quality of certified members through ongoing training and the enforcement of ethical standards, and may exclude anyone who fails to meet those standards. Society is rewarded for its trust with a professional quality that it would otherwise be unable to ensure. This is the model for the legal and medical professions and others, including accounting, architecture, and engineering.专业机构一般都可以获得大众的信赖，实际上他们和整个社会有一个约定：由他们组织考试或认证来控制某种职业的人数，通过不断的培训和道德标准的约束来保证从业人员的质量，同时剔除那些不符合标准的人们。社会将认可那些职业素养高的（低的可能会被淘汰掉），这样的模型适用于法律、医学、会计、建筑师和工程师等职业。As I will argue, neither the boundaries of the discipline of management nor a consensus on the requisite body of knowledge exists. No professional body is granted control, no formal entry or certification is required, no ethical standards are enforced, and no mechanism can exclude someone from practice. In short, management is not a profession. Moreover, management can never be a profession, and policies predicated on the assumption that it can are inherently flawed.所以我要说，无论是管理学科的诸多界限，还是知识界所存在的各个分支，没有任何一家专业机构是可控的，没有任何一种正式的认证是必须的，没有任何一条道德标准是被强制执行的，也没有任何一种机制可以排除实践中的人。简言之，管理并不是一种职业，同时管理也永远不可能成为一种职业，而以上的分析中也能看出管理和职业之间是有本质区别的。Why Not Management?为什么管理不是一种职业呢？One might ask, If medicine can reach agreement on the requisite body of knowledge for becoming a physician, why cant business do the same for management? After all, isnt the MBA a general-management qualification, and isnt there a reasonable consensus on MBA curriculum content? It is generally agreed that nobody should be allowed to practice medicine without schooling and certification; is society not also at risk from a business leader with no license to operate? Moreover, dont several organizations, including the Graduate Management Admission Council and the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, play roles similar to those of established professional bodies? And why shouldnt we introduce and enforce ethical standards?有人可能会问，如果学医学的人可以在达到相关行业机构的要求后成为一名医生，那么学商学的为何不能成为一名管理者呢？是因为MBA不是一般的管理认证？还是因为MBA的授课内容不一致？大家都知道，如果没有接受过教育和取得认证（行医执照），任何人都不能从医，但是如果那些商业领袖没有所谓的“从业执照”，这个社会就要陷入危险的境地了么？此外，也没有几家组织，包括“管理专业研究生入学考试委员会”（译者：简称为GMAC，成立于1954年，是总部位于美国的一个非营利性教育协会，其成员包括世界各地许多知名的商学院）和“国际高等商学院协会”（译者：简称为AACSB，成立于1916年 ，是全球首屈一指的商学院和会计项目非政府认证机构），可以发挥类似于前面所提到的专业机构的作用，那么为什么我们不能自己来制定和执行（管理方面的）道德标准呢？Asking whether a consensus can be reached on the body of knowledge that qualifies someone to be a manageron the basis of which society would delegate control of the training for, certification in, and practice of management to a professional bodyis not the same as asking whether consensus is possible on the MBA curriculum. That is a narrower question of whether business schools can agree on what they should teach. The real issue is whether what the schools do teach qualifies students to manage, in the way that an MD qualifies someone to practice medicine. I will argue that the answer is no, and that therefore management cannot become a profession.如果你要问那些对职业经理人进行认证的行业机构是否能达成一致（在一个可以对那些提供管理培训、认证和实践服务的专业机构进行授权的社会里），这个问题与“MBA课程能否统一”是不一样的，它其实就是在片面地问商学院能否同意教授那些制定的课程。真正的问题在于，学校所教授的知识是否符合学生？是否阻碍了医学博士指导某人进行医学实践？我的回答是否定的，这也正是管理不会成为一种职业的原因所在。Consider the nature of a business contract, which in its narrowest form is a detailed, precisely worded document, drafted by a professional lawyer and specifying the terms of an agreement, including prescribed remedies in the event of certain outcomes. The contract is the result of a professional service delivered to managers. Managers also seek the services of accounting firms for internal audits, of engineering consultancies for capital expenditure projects, and so on. Each transaction requires the specialized skills of a professional. Each is also an output from the professionals perspective and an input from the managers perspective.想一下商业合同的特性：统一的格式、专业律师起草、措辞严谨而详尽、对协议的各个方面进行规定，包括对某些结果的补救措施等，而合同就是经理人所收到的专业服务之一，他们还需要其他的服务，如让会计师事务所进行内部审计、让工程咨询公司进行项目支出预算等等，每一方面都需要特定的专业技能，而每一方面又都是由经理人提出，然后由专业的公司来实现的。The manager, however, is responsible for bringing together many inputs. The lawyer is always concerned with matters of law, whereas the managers focus may change significantly and unpredictably from one day to the next. In general, the professional is an expert, whereas the manager is a jack-of-all-trades and master of nonethe antithesis of the professional.经理人，主要负责汇总各方的意见。律师一般只关注法律相关的问题，而经理人所关心的东西是不可预测的，随时都在发生着变化。职业人员一般都是（某个领域内的）专家，与之相反，经理人就是样样皆通、样样稀松的“万金油”。The argument can be taken further. The lawyer writes a contract and charges for her time; her work is finite. Even when she has an ongoing relationship with a corporate client, her contribution is always a specialized input, measurable in terms of the amount billed. But the manager is responsible for the combined value generated by all inputs to the firm. Inputs are managed at varying stages in a products life cycle, and at any given time products are at different stages in that life cyclemeaning the managers job is never done. The managers contribution is inherently difficult to measure and has an indeterminable impact on a variety of outcomes. The difference between the lawyers world and the managers is rather like that between the value of a single revenue transaction and the value of a company as a whole. As a completed output with a monetary value, the revenue transaction is relatively objective. A companys share price is subjectivedependent on imprecise assumptions concerning a range of inputs, and ultimately a best guess about the future.我们可以就此论点进行更加深入的分析。律师的工作是有限的，写了一份合同的费用可以一次性支付，即便她和某个企业客户达成了持续的合作关系，她的付出也是一种特定的投入，是可以用数量来衡量的。而经理人需要对公司在投入与产出间产生的所有价值负责，在产品生命周期的不同阶段要有不同的投入，而每个“阶段”的任何时间都可能会出现问题，这也就意味着经理人的工作是永远做不完的，经理人的贡献本来就很难衡量，还要受到各种不可估计的结果的影响。律师与经理人之间的区别就如同“单独的交易收入”与“公司的整体价值”之间的区别，作为一种货币价值的输出形式，一笔交易的收入是客观的，而一个公司的市值是比较主观的依赖于一系列不精确的假设和对未来的猜测。All this accords, of course, with the reality that no true professional bodies have emerged in the field of management. Consider again an analogy with medicine: Although we cannot expect an unqualified person to successfully conduct brain surgery, successful businesses are frequently run by people without MBAs. It is unthinkable that society would allow an unqualified person to even attempt brain surgery, but nobody would seriously suggest that an MBA be required for entry to management. We can, of course, offer business education, including certification in the form of MBAs and other degrees, and such education can reasonably be assumed to generate better managers. Yet the difference between a business education and a professional education is stark and fundamental: The former may help individuals improve their performance, but it cannot certify their expertise. The role of the manager is inherently general, variable, and indefinable.出现上述的这些观点，都是因为目前在管理领域没有真正的专业机构。再来看看对“医学”的分析：我们绝对不会希望一个不合格（没有行医执照）的医生来进行脑科手术，但成功企业的领导者大多没有MBA学位；社会不会允许不合格的医生来尝试进行脑科手术，但却没有人认为非得有MBA学位才能进入管理层。当然，我们可以认为通过商业教育（包括授予MBA学位和其他形式的认证）可以培养出更好的经理人，但是商业教育和一般的专业教育是完全不同的，前者可以帮助个人提高（某方面的）能力，但是却不能证明其有何专长。经理人的角色本来就是不断变化且难以描述的。Business Education商业教育 The inherent differences between the professions and management have direct implications for the design of education in each. Professional education enables an individual to master the body of knowledge deemed requisite for practice. It comprises three stages: admission, during which potential entrants are screened for intellectual ability and aptitude; a taught program, during which educators impart knowledge of the subject; and formal assessment, which leads to certification. Business education also involves admission, a taught program, and assessment, but the similarity is superficial only. If business educators, imbued with notions of professionalism, fail to recognize the fundamental differences, flaws in the business education model will inevitably result.“职业”与“管理”之间的内在差异直接影响到各自的教育课程设计，“职业教育”中所学到的知识是一个人进行实践的必要条件，它包括三个阶段：入学对入学者进行智力和学习能力方面的筛选；教学教师教授各学科的专业知识；评估决定谁能获得（从业）证书。“商业教育”也包含这三个阶段，但仅仅是看起来相似罢了，如果从事“商业教育”的老师还用“职业教育”的观念来授课，而没有认识到两者的本质区别，那么势必造成“商业教育模式”上的缺陷。Admission.入学Professional education is about taking a given individual on the journey from having little or no knowledge or experience to becoming qualified. But business education is typically post-experience, meaning that participants are not novices. An MBA program offers them an opportunity to share, conceptualize, and better understand workplace experiences; to build on the skill of working with others; and to open up new career opportunities. To admit only students with little or no work experience, as the professions normally do, would be to misunderstand the nature and purpose of the learning experience.“职业教育”是将有很少或没有相关知识与经验的人培养成一个合格的从业人员，而“商业教育”是一种典型的进修（课程），也就是说参与者都不是新手。MBA课程为他们提供了一个机会来分享、总结、更好地理解工作经验，提高与他人合作的技巧，以及获得新的就业机会。那些进行“职业教育”的学生，大多没有什么工作经验，所以难免会误解学习的本质和目的。A second difference is that although professional education is concerned exclusively with the individual, a quality business education depends in a distinctive way on the peer group. Thus no given candidate can be effectively evaluated independent of all the other candidates