Management in Context en Praktijk

Is management a profession, in the way that medicine and law are professions? That question opens this lecture, and the answer turns out to be less obvious than it looks.

Management as a Profession

We start with the characteristics of a profession: a body of knowledge, a shared standard of practice, a code of conduct, and a duty to someone other than yourself. Management meets some of these and not others, and the gaps matter for how managers are held to account.

From Old-World to New-World Management

The context of management is changing. Following Laasch (2024), we contrast old-world management, which optimises for a single bottom line in a stable environment, with new-world management, which has to create value along several dimensions at once. We work through examples of both and ask which of them students recognise from their own experience.

We then define professional management, distinguish between types of managers, and map the domains of professionality.

Management in Practice

What does a manager actually do? We separate effectiveness from efficiency using a case that looks like a success on one measure and a failure on the other, and we introduce the three elements of management practices.

Your Own Role

The last part of the lecture turns the question around: how does a university education train you to become a professional manager? We discuss academic impartiality, why it matters, and what it asks of you as a student.

We close with the briefing for Group Assignment 02, the company profile: how to organise desk research, what the profile should contain, and how organisations are allocated to teams.

Required Readings

• Laasch, O. (2024). Principles of Business & Management: Practicing Ethics, Responsibility, Sustainability (3rd ed.). Chapter 1: Management in Context.
• Laasch, O. (2024). Chapter 2: Management in Practice.

About the Course

This lecture is part of Inleiding Verantwoordelijke Organisatie, a first-year course in the BSc in Business Administration at Radboud University. The course examines how organisations create social, environmental, and economic value, and introduces the three dimensions of professional management: ethics, responsibility, and sustainability.

Alongside the lectures, students work in teams on the Young Innovators Project with the regional network organisation Lifeport MKB: each team researches an organisation in the Nijmegen region, visits it, and reports on what it found.