Professional Knowledge and Social Mobility: Postwar Changes in the Knowledge-Base of Management Accounting

Abstract

The mutation of professional knowledge is a neglected issue in the sociology of the professions. Through an historical study of the qualification requirements of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), this paper argues that upward social mobility for the subordinate managerial professions creates a tendency for their knowledge bases to expand into a common ground associated with senior management practice. The by-product is a tendency to abandon the function-specific knowledges associated with subordinate status. From the point of view of capitalist control techniques, there is a consequential tendency towards stagnation in the immediate means of labour process control. For the professions themselves, upward mobility involves a number of dilemmas. Firstly it implies that their knowledges will tend to overlap in the area of corporate management. Thus the managerial credibility of a professional knowledge is in tension with its secure possession. Secondly the inherent credentialism of professional mobility projects may be counter-productive in the context of a pragmatic management culture. Initially, CIMA sought to overcome the first dilemma by creating an elite grade of membership qualified to practice management accounting, whilst retaining the practice of cost accounting for the main grade. This attempt to divide the knowledge base of the profession failed because it involved the introduction of an examination which threatened the status of existing senior members. Subsequently the Institute has had to manage the tension between managerial credibility and distinctiveness within a single body of knowledge. In the sense that the Institute is now a large body with members in senior managerial positions, its collective mobility project has been a success. In the process, however, the distinctive features of its knowledge base have been eroded. Because of this and because the knowledges required of senior managers may be about to change, the Institute now feels itself to be under threat.