Professionality of Business Managers

Shinichi Takeuchi
Professor, NUCB Business School / Director, Case Center Japan

At the beginning of this year, our research team prepared a paper focusing on the “professionality” of schoolteachers, with a particular focus on work style reforms within Japanese school education. As individuals deeply involved in the training of schoolteachers, we have long been concerned about the poor working environment faced by educators in Japan, which is often referred to as those of a “black workplace”, or an exploitative workplace. Naturally, we are in favor of reforming these practices. However, in our paper, we also highlighted the critical issue that such reforms, while necessary, risk setting back the professionalism of schoolteachers. Drawing on a range of studies on the concept of “profession,” we discussed the factors that contribute to the progression and regression of professionality.

Many traditional European studies of professions recognized the concept of a profession in the early modern period. The concept of “profession” began to seep into society along with the idea that certain occupations were not suitable for just anyone in a time when highly skilled professionals who once served the royal courts began providing special services based on their expertise to the broader public.

The professions that emerged in modern society soon became hierarchical, and soon gradations of professionality began to form. This raises the question: where do schoolteachers and business managers fall within this hierarchy? As it turns out, they have struggled to be recognized as high-status professions, which is discouraging to those of us in business school education. Several factors commonly define a profession, the main ones being the existence of and hurdles to training programs, qualification and employment examinations, competitive compensation, ongoing post-employment training and self-development, and the presence of professional groups, to name a few.

Traditionally, the three professions associated with university faculties have been medicine, law, and theology. It is difficult to imagine a doctor who has not studied medicine, a lawyer who has not studied law, or a priest who has not studied theology. By contrast, many business managers have not studied business management or business administration, which may explain why the occupation is not recognized as a profession in academia, even though top-class business managers often exhibit a high degree of professionalism.

So how should we approach the question of professionality in business management? While it is often excluded from the academic concept of a profession, it is an occupation that clearly is professional in that “not just anyone can do the job”. Although many businesspersons may not actively reflect on this question, those of us in academia cannot afford to overlook it. Business administration is, after all, an academic discipline. As a researcher in a business school, I believe there could be a more substantial exploration into what constitutes professionalism in business management. How does it progress? Under what conditions does it regress? These are questions that merit careful consideration.

About Research

1.  M. Nakamura, Y. Kamazuka, H. Inaba, and S. Takeuchi (2025), Case Method Practice and its Analysis on the Subject of Workplace Reform: Toward the Reconstruction of Teachers’ Professionalism, Bulletin of the Center for Educational Research and Teacher Development, vol.35, pp.106-118, Shizuoka University.