Verktækni - 2019, Page 61

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We will discuss our findings and speculate on how project management in Iceland might evolve in the
near future.

Theory
The basic attributes of a profession were described by Abraham Flexner almost 100 years ago, as
explained by Bowie in 1991. A profession possesses and draws upon a store of knowledge. It secures a
theoretical perception of the phenomena with which it deals. It applies its knowledge to the practical
solution of problems. It strives to add to and improve its knowledge. It passes on what it knows to
novice generations, not randomly but deliberately and formally. It establishes criteria of admission, good
practice and conduct. And finally, it has an unselfish spirit. Wilson (1932) discussed the question "what is
a profession", and wondered if business could be called a profession, according to the definitions of
Flexner. According to Wilson, this was not the case. Wilson, a Harvard professor, suggested that to fulfill
the definitions of Flexner, theory and practice should be harnessed together and driven side by side,
rather than one following the other. He suggested that in time, business would develop and become
rather more of a science than it was in his day.

In 1964, Harold L. Wilensky published his paper "The professionalization of everyone." He pointed out
some limitations to professionalization—knowledge or doctrine too general, vague, narrow or specific—
for an exclusive knowledge base. He described the process towards professionalization through a set of
steps—training school, university school, local association, national association, state licensing law and
code of ethics. The question, whether management is a profession, was asked by Edgar Schein,
professor at Sloan School of Management at MIT in 1968, in his article entitled "Organizational
Socialization and the Profession of Management." To answer this question, he defined some of the basic
characteristics of professionalism. Professional decisions are made by means of general principles. They
imply knowledge in a specific area in which a person is an expert, not a generalized body of wisdom. The
professional's relations with his clients are objective. A professional achieves his status by
accomplishment. The decisions of a professional are assumed to be on behalf of his client and
independent of self-interest. A professional typically relates to a voluntary association of fellow
professionals and accepts only their authority as a sanction of his own behavior. And finally, a
professional can be said to be an advising agent who is supposed to know better than his/her client
what might be good for him. This can put the client in a vulnerable an exposed position, which has led to
the development of codes of ethics and professional conduct, to protect the client. Edgar Schein reflects
on these different characteristics and concludes that, on several bases, management is a profession,
but, on other bases, it has not yet progressed to become a full profession. Abbott (1988) wrote about
the theory of professions. He defined professions in a general way, as exclusive occupational groups
applying abstract knowledge to particular cases. But Abbott claimed that the most important aspect of
professions are the control of knowledge, skills and work tasks. An important contribution here was to
shed light on how occupations define their right to control the provision of particular services and
activities, hence inter-professional competition. Abbott analyzed the nature of relationships between
professional occupations and how they are shaped over time.

In view of Abbott's findings, one might wonder about the status of project management within general
management theory, and the role of professional associations in shaping project management as a
profession. In recent years, the role of professional associations in defining project management as a