Chief Executives From 1960-1989: A Trend Toward Professionalization

There has been a long-standing debate whether the field of Management is deserving of professional status, rather than simply status as an occupation. Critics claim that the absence of a required educational background and a professional organization with its own code of ethics are what keep management from joining established professions such as medicine and law. Rather than the study management as a field, this paper studies its participants, 1070 different Chief Executive Officers from 247 companies across thirty years to determine whether their demographic characteristics have changed over time in a manner reflecting professionalization of the field.