Management as a professional discipline*

The nature of management as a discipline is problematic. Drawing on Aristotle’s concepts of poiesis and techne , it can however be seen as one of a class of professional disciplines such as medicine, law, engineering or teaching which are characterized by their instrumentality, contingency and processuality. These three attributes suggest three basic questions (What do managers do? What affects what they do? How do they do it?) which in turn yield a three‐dimensional model. While the contents of the model must be regarded as tentative, its form offers one way in which management can constitute itself as a discipline and re‐position itself within higher education. Questions arise in relation to the nature and status of the model, the segmented nature of management work, its varying internal/external focus and the locus of management decisions. However the model appears to provide a useful, heuristic framework within which practitioners can address specific, concrete problems and decisions.