Tensiones, dilemas y conflictos en el proceso de profesionalización del management en la Argentina

In this article, we address the problem of the professionalization of the Administration in our country between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 21st century from the interactionist perspective of sociology of professions. Through the description of the historical course of the attempts to establish management as a profession, it seeks to show the political and economic processes that conditioned the efforts to legitimize it. The methodological strategy included a review of the existing literature on the professionalization of management in Latin America. Likewise, we surveyed documents produced by the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires and analyzed regulatory frameworks from different stages. On the other hand, we interviewed professionals and academics in the field. The results of this work highlight the importance of exploring the circumstances that marked the winding path of the professionalization of the Administration in Argentina. Adopting this perspective avoids placing peripheral cases as "incomplete" with respect to ideal types, to account for their conditions and thus enrich the history of professions from an empirical dimension. We bet that the present work constitutes a starting point to deepen the reflections on the training and professional intervention of administrators in light of the disputes surrounding their social role.