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Prof.
J.-C. Spender BA (1960), MA (1965)
Engineering Honors, Oxford University, UK Started research on
a psychological/behavioral approach to corporate strategy-making after
military service in submarines, work as a nuclear engineer (Rolls-Royce),
large systems sales manager (IBM), industrial banker (Slater-Walker),
and as a management information consultant. This PhD thesis eventually
won the 1980 Academy of Management A. T. Kearney Prize and was later published
by Blackwell. Subsequent research focused on managerial cognition and
the epistemological issues within organization and management theorizing.
As an academic, worked at City University (London), UCLA, Glasgow University,
Rutgers, and other universities before becoming Dean of the Business School
at FIT/SUNY. Also taught in Finland, Scandinavia, Japan, China, New Zealand
and throughout Europe. Now consulting, researching, writing, teaching
and lecturing around the world on knowledge management and strategy.
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Management as a Regulated Profession We management teachers
take it as obvious that Business Schools are professional schools purveying
a defined corpus of managerial knowledge. But management's status as a
profession has worried educators for centuries. The earliest European
professional schools were military, political, and medical. During the
18th and 19th century the emerging engineering, administration, and law
schools provided templates for today's BSchools. Yet, unlike engineering
or the law, it seems BSchool education neither controls access to management
nor is a good predictor of managerial success. Nor is the body of managerial
knowledge exclusively constructed, adjudicated, or policed by the BSchool
professoriat. On the contrary, throughout our history we see persistent
criticism based on the perceived irrelevance of the BSchool curriculum
and process. Does the history of management education suggest we in the
profession of teaching it are missing something fundamental about the
nature of managerial knowledge? |
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