Thursday, February 4, 2010

Managers in popular media


In CIMBA's spring semester session of Introduction to Management, we debated the need to "professionalize" the practice of management in ways similar to that of the practices of law and medicine. Anyone can be a manager, but you can't be a medical doctor or lawyer without a specific degree and credentials (with the exception of "My Cousin Vinny"). The focal article of our discussion was Khurana and Nohria's 2008 HBR article "It's time to make management a true profession." After our classroom discussion, I asked CIMBA students to send me images of managers from the popular media and got some interesting (and scary) results. Click here for CIMBAn submittals. Are doctors and lawyers similarly depicted in popular media? Is the "dark side" of management just as dark in law and medicine? What does a "professional manager" look like?

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