Economic development under IMF bailout; Role of the professional manager
For me, it is indeed heart-warming to share with you, my thoughts on this thorny topic, which I have termed the “IMF Bailout Saga” and what we can and should do as professional managers to help our dear country, Ghana, to overcome the perennial challenges of economic downturn in our life as an independent country for the last 58 years to date.
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Permit me to begin by defining in-depth who a professional manager is before turning my attention to the bailout saga and the role we can and should play as professional managers.
Definition of profession
The first thing to discuss is, I believe, what is meant by a ‘profession’. Definition is a boring subject, but some discussion of what is deemed a profession is quite essential to the subject of our discourse. This is particularly so because in this instance, a strict definition is impossible, considering the array of professionals in the world today.
In the age of Trollope’s novels, the professions par excellence were the Church, Law, Medicine, and the Officer grades in the armed forces. But this is not merely unacceptable today; even if it were right, it would in fact be misleading.
The growth in the number of professions shows it to be untrue. Professions today are more numerous than they have ever been in the past, and their services more than ever essential to the good of the public.
The newer and more marginal professions often announce elaborate codes of ethics, or set up ‘paper organisations’ on a national level long before an institutional or any technical base are formed.
The tactical or strategic situations of an occupation, old or new, may demand an authority to certify the actual level of development of the technique, training or level of association required. Indeed, in a culture such as ours, many occupations will be tempted to try everything at once or go in for anything opportunity and expediency may dictate.
The “professionalisation” of labour management and commerce is largely of this kind.
Hallmarks of professionalism
Professions could be defined by the possession of certain traits, notably independent, ethical or technical standard of performance and collegiate control of such attributes.
The hallmarks of professionalism are autonomous expertise and the service ideal.
These two criteria do in fact embrace all of the attributes of professionalism. For instance, with regard to autonomous expertise, an occupation wishing to exercise professional authority must find a technical basis for it, assert an exclusive jurisdiction, link both skill and jurisdiction to standards of training, and convince the public that its services are uniquely trustworthy, and the service ideal.
But the criteria of “technical” may not be enough. The craftsman typically goes to trade school, has an apprenticeship, forms an occupational association to regulate entry to the trade, and gets legal sanction for the training to confirm that the practitioners conform to a set of moral norms that characterise the established profession.
These norms dictate not only that the practitioner does technically competent, high quality work, but that he adheres to a service ideal – devotion to the client’s interests more than personal or commercial profit should guide decisions when the two criteria are in conflict.
Professions, in fact, have an aura of mystery surrounding them, a set of tacit assumptions which separate the profession from the more general occupational milieu but which are difficult for the layman to appreciate and understand.
A professional manager enjoys the monopoly of privilege on the grounds of the professional’s superior qualities of independence, integrity, and of service in the interest of the public. The relationship of these characteristics to ethical behaviour is central to much of the criticisms leveled against the professions since the Independence of Ghana nearly 58 years ago.
The charges of all professional groups are onerous and subsist in the responsible and self-directed application of specialised expertise to matters of significance in the conduct of human affairs.
Professions are relied upon to mediate pressures in a manner that protects and enhances the public interest. Qualification to undertake this role must come from an occupational group’s specialist expertise and demonstrated commitment to apply it responsibly (West, 2003).
A profession is described as an occupation that properly involves a liberal education or its equivalent and mental, rather than manual, labour. T
he liberal education anticipated is one that imbued the young person with such values as righteousness, wisdom, and sense of justice. Nineteenth century concepts of professionalism stressed the probity, dignity, honour, and gentlemanly instincts of the practitioner.
The duality of a special kind of occupation and the affirmation or promise was considered to be implicit in the notion of a profession.
Covenant to Serve the Public
A professional has an explicit covenant to serve the public interest in situations where there are considerable economic incentives to adhere to self-interest (Peace, 2006).
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This covenant is a relationship premised on the interactions of people entrusting and accepting entrustment. The covenant relationship is a binding, enduring relationship of mutual loyalty that aspires to the common good.
This covenant is undertaken between the profession and society for most compelling reasons – reasons which have been increasingly compelling with the passage of time and the corresponding exponential expansion of our economic society, and the complexity of our corporate enterprises.
It is to assure the effective functioning of capitalism with its corporate complexities as the catalyst, which demands an effective system of corporate governance, transparency, and accountability (the art and science of professional management) and it is to oversee such a process that the covenant was entered into by society with our profession.
Code of Ethics
A profession’s code of ethics is perhaps its most visible and explicit enunciation of its professional norms. A code embodies the collective conscience of a profession and it is testimony to the group’s recognition of its moral dimension. A code of ethics is generally accepted as one of the criteria which, if present, indicates professional status.
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A code of ethics has formalised ‘the moral principles’ that should be followed by members of the organisation. The existence of a written code of ethics is not in itself of any great significance.
Members of a professional group may adhere to a code even if it is only implied, and there is little difficulty for an occupational group to write a code of ethics which is not adhered to.
The process by which the ethical code is enforced, if indeed it is enforced, is a guide to whether the code strengthens the claim of the occupational group to professional status. Enforcement is by means of the professional culture.
Management as a profession
Management has long been a profession, requiring experience and expertise that is to be underpinned by systematic knowledge. Business schools have developed because of this, but today’s particular need is for knowledge to be widely diffused.
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Managers with different specialist skills have to understand one another and require a wide range of knowledge, if the implementation of their skills is to be effective within the broader context in which they have to be applied.
Both aspects have become essential in a world which, as we all know, is changing rapidly in practically all aspects of business.
The challenges for today’s managers have never been greater or more complex and dynamic. Today’s organisations are undergoing a period of unprecedented transformation in response to rapid changes in the competitive global environment. Vertical structures of the past are tilting into more horizontal organisations.
Hierarchies are being interlaced with teams. Business process re-engineering has moved across functions to remold the entire organisation.
My brothers and sisters, good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them. This is what is called ‘enlightened management leadership’.
Enlightened Leadership Challenges
Enlightened leadership is spiritual if we understand spirituality not as some kind of religious dogma or ideology, but as the domain of awareness where we experience values like truth, goodness, beauty, love, and compassion, and also intuition, creativity, insight, integrity, and focused attention. Sadly, this is where we as managers of the economy of Ghana, have caused the mess we find ourselves in the country today. We have failed as professional managers.
In Ghana today, the system offers temptations to behave unethically by favouring the interests of client management over those of the public interest.
This end up compromising the integrity and effectiveness of the professional who is so important to the society.“If societal values are deteriorating, maintaining high ethical standards in any profession for socio-economic development grows increasingly difficult. Many will undoubtedly ask: if everyone else is cheating, then how can an ethical person possibly succeed? The answer depends on the definition of success” (Smith, 2003).
Complexities and volatilities in commercial activity, incentives and propensities for secrecy and obfuscation, conflicting interests among affected parties, and the severity of the consequences of misjudgments conspire to ensure that the lot of a professional is not an easy one. The temptation to fail is greater than ever and much more dangerous in our current democratic dispensation in Ghana.