Professionalism as proxy for business education: Considering Arts and Science majors pursuing business minors

Abstract

With increased scrutiny over the value and promise of higher education, liberal arts degrees face criticism, in favor of professional degrees like business that position students for a linear career path to lucrative work. Research for this article is based on 20 interviews with college students majoring in Arts and Sciences, who completed a summer program to obtain a business minor. Our findings demonstrate that participants talk about the business minor as a key factor in ‘selling themselves’ to potential employers by (1) highlighting the discipline required to complete the program, (2) acting as a conversation starter with potential employees, and (3) emphasizing the broad applicability of a business minor. Implications demonstrate the power of professionalism to render specialized knowledge (like business knowledge) insignificant while offering an extension of Williams’ ideal-worker norm to young people.

Keywords

Business education discourse higher education occupational socialization professionalism worker identity

The pursuit of higher education represents a focused period where young people are actively engaged in the process of seeking out information and experiences in order to position themselves as workers (Corker et al., 2013; Jablin, 2000; Pascarella and Terenzini, 2005). Through (in)formal talk, students learn what types of work are valued (Clair, 1996) while navigating others’ expectations regarding their future career paths (Anderson and Mounts, 2012; Lair and Wieland, 2012). But the context of higher education is not fixed; it is constantly changing, reflecting broader societal norms and values, shaping students’ experiences with it.

At a cultural level, work itself is undergoing a transformation as jobs move out of factories and into a more connected, globalized world (Mumby, 2015). With such changes, organizational control has shifted from direct tactics intended to physically control employees to indirect tactics taken up by workers themselves. Individuals are now willing to engage in ‘competitive social relations through the construction and ongoing management of an entrepreneurial self’ (Mumby, 2015: 27) in never before seen ways. Organizations benefit from workers who constantly feel the need to compete with one another to demonstrate their fitness and performance. As a result, young people preparing for the workforce face increasing pressure to set themselves apart from their peers.

At the same time, colleges and universities find themselves in a period of intense scrutiny. Shifting social realities have sparked recent debate over questions of purpose, access, cost, and value of higher education (Bidwell, 2015; The Economist, 2014), while institutions of higher education answer to corporate imperatives (Porschitz et al., 2015). Students and parents have become more demanding consumers (McMillan and Cheney, 1996), expecting a clear and measurable return on their investment—leading to questions about one’s chosen course of study (Lair and Wieland, 2012). As majors compete for students, academic departments—especially those in the Arts and Sciences (A&S)—must contend with criticisms, seemingly at the expense of more ‘professionally’ oriented programs like business education. No longer is it enough to simply earn a degree; students are increasingly scrutinized for their choice of school, major, and extracurricular activities, in regard to measurable outcomes of the college experience. Students must navigate choices about future careers and occupational identities while branding themselves as the ideal worker (Drago, 2007).

In the article that follows, we empirically examine how choices about college major/minor are rooted in a prevailing discourse of professionalism that underlies debates regarding the purpose of higher education. This article will show that, as students explore courses of study and potential careers, they are already engaged in the process of branding themselves as workers. We take a discursive approach to inform the process of crafting an occupational identity in order to draw connections between the micro and macro discourses that constitute organizing. Specifically, we consider the choice for liberal A&S majors to pursue a business minor. We begin with a review of current literature examining occupational identity as a discursive process, specifically considering discourses of professionalism that locate success in the ability to perform as worker, before arguing for higher education, specifically business education, as an important but contested site of occupational socialization.

Occupational identity as discursive process

Rather than having some essential or real meaning that ‘precedes or evades its dominant discursive articulation in any historical or cultural context,’ work gathers meaning from the particular economic, political, and historical context in which it is constructed (Du Gay, 1996: 5). In Western society, few roles are more central to our lives than our identities as workers (Beder, 2000). More than simply an economic necessity, engaging in work has become a central source of identity and a moral issue by which to judge a person’s value to a society.

But beyond identifying as workers, we make sense of ourselves and others as particular types of workers. The ‘shifting, material, and discursive framing of image and practices associated with a particular type of work’ (Meisenbach, 2008: 263) or one’s occupational identity is a ‘precarious product of discursive activity’ (Ashcraft, 2005: 72). Work becomes meaningful through individuals’ ongoing (re)negotiation of symbolic and material resources (Mumby, 2004). Amid these shifting contexts, particular types of work are distinguished from one another through discourses and practices that (re)produce our understanding of that work and the place it holds in society. Through communication over time, individuals share in the practice of occupational identity construction.

Rather than once popular stage models (Jablin, 2000) that cast the process of occupational socialization as a clearly defined phase anticipatory of work, a discursive approach reminds us, ‘identities are neither given nor fixed; they take shape, entangle, and evolve through discourse’ (Ashcraft, 2005: 71–72). As a discursive process, the formation of one’s occupational identity is always a response to the shifting context in which it occurs (Ashcraft, 2007). Thus, occupational identification is as much a process of articulating what it means to be a particular type of worker as it is a process of coming to appropriately perform as worker among fluid expectations. And while the expectations for the performance of a particular type of work are in some ways unique to that work, they are also subject to the macro-level discourses that shape contemporary understandings of work.

Performing work amid a discourse of professionalism

Increasingly, the value and meaning of work(er) have come to be defined by notions of professionalism, where work is highly specialized and dependent upon prescribed performances of fitness and commitment. Although most often invoked ‘as if it were a neutral, self-evident descriptor’ (Cheney and Ashcraft, 2007: 147), professionalism ‘indexes a set of communicative and stylistic expectations’ about what type of work(er) is valuable in our society (p. 162). Traditionally, ‘pure professions,’ such as law and medicine, were cast as highly respected jobs because of the autonomy and freedom from managerial oversight that arose from the specialization, training, and accreditation required of these workers (Massey, 2010). Over time, professionalism has evolved to refer more generally to work marked by (1) a clear division of labor, (2) training and expertise, and (3) exclusivity that is the basis of a social order (Cheney and Ashcraft, 2007).

The exclusivity that marks professional work as distinct is wholly dependent upon the contrast of professionalism with nonprofessional ‘Others’—jobs not requiring particular specialization, certification, or a code of conduct—even as these qualifications are created by the very groups to which they apply (Ashcraft et al., 2012). Nonprofessional ‘Others’ are brought into relief to create the boundaries of a professional domain and necessarily exist outside those boundaries (Ashcraft et al., 2012). In such a system, occupations are valued ‘not on the grounds of innate merit, but on claims about merit’—the result of occupational branding efforts that manufacture ownership of work through the setting of standards, acceptable practices, and scope of expertise (p. 472). But claims to professionalism, like occupational identity, require a concerted effort across contexts and among various stakeholders. What is taken-for-granted actually requires ongoing maintenance of a particular occupational brand.

Business education is one such example of a ‘professionalization project.’ Only after management was first taken up as an academic pursuit, did management schools agree upon and endorse a specific curriculum and accrediting body to gain legitimacy by establishing themselves as a ‘profession’ (Khurana, 2007). Today, even among jobs that are exclusive of the professions by their very nature, professionalism remains a powerful resource for negotiating a particular occupational brand or identity (Cheney and Ashcraft, 2007). In the absence of accreditation or specialized training and autonomy, nonprofessional occupations adopt certain standards of professionalism and ask workers to perform accordingly to establish legitimacy.

Just as occupations are ‘continually under construction, beckoning stakeholders to imbue them with meaning’ (Ashcraft et al., 2012: 477), so too is the performance of worker. As work has become more specialized and organizational control more distributed, ‘it is precisely employees’ sense of self and identity that becomes the ‘contested terrain’ on which the dynamics of workplace control gets played out’ (Mumby, 2015: 24). Workers become enterprising subjects who exert great individual effort to perform as professionals (Du Gay, 1996; Lair et al., 2005; Nadesan and Trethewey, 2000). Workers take it upon themselves to accrue certifications, increase productivity, and take up formal dress and bodily comportment befitting of professional workers (Trethewey, 1999). Ultimately, these performances of professionalism eclipse the work itself, (re)producing the invisibility of nonprofessional work in ways that justify lower compensation and a lack of respect and value in our society (Cheney and Ashcraft, 2007).

Exploring the work–education intersection

Scholars have recently turned to business schools as an important site to examine the discursive construction and performance of identity in regards to work (Harman, 2012). Organizational and management scholars have documented specific discourses that enable and constrain performances of a business or management identity (Harman, 2012; Hay, 2014; Sturdy et al., 2006), as well as the transformation in business education that is reflective of the changing US economy (Khurana, 2007). Researchers point to the formative experience of MBA programs as discursive sites for shaping identities and performances of future business professionals (Bell and Clarke, 2014; Kelan, 2013; Sturdy et al., 2006; Warhurst, 2011). And yet, little research has examined occupational identity construction as it begins among undergraduate students. For organizational scholars, undergraduate education marks an important site to reflect on the discursive construction of work(ers) as it (1) represents a transition between education and work, where talk is often explicitly focused on work, and (2) currently occupies a much scrutinized space of meaning where the value and goals of education are actively debated. We consider both of these issues below as support for our choice of higher education as a focus.

Colloquialisms as a site for meaning-making about work

Whether in the context of small talk among peers or giving serious thought to one’s future as a worker, college is a place where talk about work is frequent and value-laden. Students’ talk carries with it assumptions about what counts as work and what types of work are valued. Simple colloquialisms that ‘exist as taken-for-granted realities … act in a reifying and socializing manner,’ reflecting and reinforcing a system of beliefs (Clair, 1996: 254). For example, students casually refer to ‘real jobs’ as a way of distinguishing early work experiences from future work goals. More than just positioning students as anticipatory of work, the discursive trope of a ‘real job’ legitimates full-time, skilled work and ultimately positions money as a primary factor in determining the legitimacy of one’s work (Clair, 1996).

Similarly, the ubiquitous refrain, ‘what are you going to do with that major?’—frequently aimed at arts and humanities majors—initiates conversations and may also communicate judgment about one’s choice of study and perceived potential for future success (Lair and Wieland, 2012). Although it can provide a space for self-reflection, it operates to reinforce the expectation of a linear career model (Buzzanell and Goldzwig, 1991) where ‘major selection [is] tightly coupled with future work’ (p. 444). Acceptable answers demonstrate ‘potential to succeed—narrowly interpreted as financial success’ (p. 439) and are closely linked with discourses of professionalism that value the individual worker as her or his own brand. Students receive ongoing and unsolicited feedback about potential occupational identities, initiating processes of defense, change, or exploration when feedback challenges or threatens a chosen identity (Anderson and Mounts, 2012). Thus, undergraduate education becomes a rich space for casual talk to shape social discourses about work and socialize future workers into particular values and expectations. Scholars, however, are not the only stakeholders considering higher education as an important site for occupational identity formation. Colleges and universities find themselves at the center of debate among students, parents, and policymakers.

Debating the value of higher education

Extending well beyond the interests of organizational scholars, higher education itself has become a hotly contested institution in Western culture. In their 2012 manuscript, Lair and Wieland outline the debate over the value of higher education, amid lower college enrollment and rising unemployment rates spurred by the global financial crisis (Allen, 2010), the vocationalization of colleges and universities (Slaughter and Rhoades, 2004), and questions regarding the value and purpose of higher education measured by return on investment (Adams, 2013; The Economist, 2014). With such concerns comes the ongoing (re)negotiation of the purpose and meaning of higher education as site of discourse for the construction of work.

Where ‘universities have traditionally served dual purposes—to prepare engaged citizens and to prepare skilled workers for future careers’—social transformations have led to a tightening of their mission to ‘focus on market value’ (Porschitz et al., 2015: 3). The rise of ‘neoliberal governance’ structures marks a shift from direct tactics used to control workers’ bodies to dispersed efforts at manipulating workers’ desires and sense of self (Mumby, 2015). Workers are no longer held to a pre-determined standard, but are expected to be ‘constantly engaged in competitive social relations through the construction and ongoing management of an entrepreneurial self’ (p. 27). Successful workers recognize the importance of their identity as a brand and constantly ‘construct and manage (unstable) identities through communicative performance’ (Mumby, 2015: 25). Higher education, then, becomes one more opportunity for young people to begin crafting an occupational identity and grooming their personal brand.

Amid expectations for ‘highly employable workers who can transition seamlessly into global organizations’ (Porschitz et al., 2015: 3–4) come questions about the relevance of liberal arts programs (Gerber, 2012; Pyle, 2013; Smith, 2012). Critics cite the lack of a linear career path (Roksa and Levey, 2010), below-average earnings (National Association of Colleges and Employers, 2012), and higher unemployment rates (Flaherty, 2012) of liberal arts programs, while extolling the virtues of a business education, ‘focus[ed] on preparing students to be immediately employable (Hall, 2008) in careers that are competitive and individualistic (Perriton, 2014)’ (Porschitz et al., 2015: 4). All the while, however, business schools face their own identity struggles as they navigate competing discourses of being located in higher education, positioning themselves as a profession, and increasingly answering to corporate beneficiaries (Khurana, 2007). It is at this nexus of A&S and business education that we consider the impact of relevant discourses on the identities of students pursuing liberal arts and business education with the following research question:

RQ. How does a business minor shape A&S majors’ identities as future workers?

Methods

Participants and organization

Created in 1997, the Compressed Business Minor (CBM) offers non-business majors from universities across the country the opportunity to earn a business minor over the course of one summer at a business school ranked as one of the top undergraduate business programs in the United States. Through an intensive 16-credit curriculum, CBM students learn the basics of business through face-to-face courses focusing on finance, economics, accounting, marketing, management, corporate responsibility, and professional development. The CBM curriculum is divided into three units: fundamentals of business, corporate responsibility/financial management, and applied economics/competitive effectiveness. Unit 1 serves as an introduction to the business world, including a crash course on Microsoft Excel, a professional development and personal branding course, and an overview of business fundamentals. Unit 2 introduces students to macro- and microeconomics and business law. The final unit explains the foundation of corporate finance and accounting and culminates with a group-marketing project. As students progress through the three units, earned credit increases and students report a much greater level of difficulty.

Participants for our study included undergraduates in the College of A&S at a medium-sized university in the United States who completed the CBM program. Participants ranged from 20 to 22 years of age and their majors and minors included biology, communication, criminology, comprehensive science, chemistry, economics, education, English, French, history, humanities, honors, mathematics, political science, and psychology.

Participants were recruited from those who had participated in the CBM, rather than those who obtain a business minor during the academic year because of the time and monetary investment the CBM requires. The CBM costs nearly US$10,000 and runs for 7–8 hours a day for 5 days a week over the course of 10 weeks, eliminating many other possibilities for work, study, or leisure during this time. Because of the time and financial investment, the CBM demands a different level of commitment than a traditional academic year minor. We were curious about why A&S students would choose to invest in this significant academic and financial undertaking.

Data collection

Criterion sampling was used to recruit undergraduate A&S students who had completed the CBM program via email and word of mouth (Tracy, 2013). Data consisted of 20 respondent interviews, which allowed us to access participants’ motivations, perceptions, and emotions pertaining to their major identification and future worker identity. Our semi-structured interviews averaged 30 minutes in length and posed open-ended questions aimed at understanding students’ choice to pursue a business minor, including ‘What are you going to do with your major?’ ‘Are you satisfied with your CBM experience?’ and ‘Have your job prospects changed since getting a business minor?’ With participants’ permission, interviews were audio-recorded and fully transcribed by one of the co-authors, resulting in approximately 140 pages of data. Saturation was achieved following the completion of 20 interviews, as similar themes and patterns became consistent across interviewees’ responses. In order to begin the data immersion phase, transcription was done by a different member of the team than the pair of authors who conducted each interview. Once our analyses were complete, participants were asked to provide member reflections. Five participants responded, confirming our interpretation of the data resonated with their experiences.

Data analysis

Data analysis proceeded through a three-phase constant-comparative approach where we moved from descriptive to analytic coding (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Strauss and Corbin, 1990). Descriptive coding, completed individually by each team member, organized participants’ responses in relation to our research questions; examples included ‘ambiguity,’ ‘enjoyment,’ ‘marketability,’ ‘supplement,’ and ‘resume-builder.’ A detailed codebook ensured consistency of first level coding across all coders. A second phase of analysis had the team move to analytic coding where descriptive codes were combined and pieces of raw data were pulled in as exemplars, updating the codebook to track our collective thinking and ensure consistency across authors. For example, in an iterative process of analysis (Tracy, 2013), ‘ambiguity’ (i.e. having no clear path, multiple career options), ‘parental encouragement’ (external motivation toward one career path), and ‘uncertainty’ (no confidence in navigating the transition from major to career) were combined and informed by the literature to create a broader category of ‘linear career path,’ as these descriptive themes represent factors that affect a student following—or straying—from a logical, ‘linear’ career path based on their major. Analytic codes including ‘ideal worker,’ ‘symbolic indicators of success,’ and ‘marketability’ were defined in relation to our research questions using the codebook conceptualized by the entire team.

In the final phase of analysis, the research team met face-to-face for several more rounds of collaborative analysis, where conversation began to coalesce around students’ communication about their business minors and how they positioned them as students and future workers. We noted specific resources students described acquiring from the CBM to position themselves and contextualize their primary fields of study. Through these discussions, we came to see the importance of the CBM in regard to the performance of worker and the resources provided by a business discourse to shape both notions of work and students as workers.

Buying and selling professionalism

Echoing Lair and Wieland’s (2012) findings, participants in our study referred to the question of ‘what are you going to do with that major?’ as ‘the million dollar question.’ Interviews revealed a struggle between participants’ desire to pursue a major they found interesting while meeting expectations for a major that would lead to gainful employment:

Going into college I had people tell me … that it was a waste of money for me to go to a school as good as [this] and major in English. I literally had an eye doctor who looked at my mom and was like, ‘You’re literally letting her go to [this school] to be an English major?’ Yeah, yikes. That was disgusting.

Comments like the one faced by Jane point to an expectation that a good major is directly connected to a linear career path (Lair and Wieland, 2012). To answer our research question, we considered how the CBM functioned for A&S students, especially in the context of their chosen major. In contrast to the interest or excitement they described of their A&S majors, business minors provide a sense of security by reducing the ambiguity that comes with an A&S major. Participants spoke of their business minor, not in terms of skills they might gain but in terms of alleviating the uncertainty of an A&S degree. Communication major Aaron claimed, ‘I always made the joke that I took CBM to get my mom to stop nagging me about getting a job.’ The CBM was seen as a way to get the best of both worlds, as explained by Noelle, whose father reasoned,

this is the perfect like way to like get to a job that you might want that’s like higher paying or something like that, but also still have like you know that like psych degree that you want at the end of the four years.

The CBM allowed participants to more confidently answer questions about future job prospects while majoring in a subject they loved.

Completing the CBM marks an important discursive move for students toward being seen as a worker. Participants expressed their feeling that a business degree (even if only a minor) made them more ‘marketable’ as a job candidate. For most, the initial decision to participate in the CBM program was a calculated one, meant to better position them as workers. Mathematics major Gavin explained, ‘It makes you look more marketable.’ Although only two participants ever mentioned a clear path from their business education to a specific career (the same number who made a direct connection between their A&S major and a career), the top benefit participants spoke of a business minor was the way it positioned them on the job market. Comprehensive science major Taylor noted her business minor would allow her to ‘be able to sell myself.’ Kathy, communication major, echoed this sentiment explaining, ‘I have a business minor as well and to be able to talk about that program a little bit, I think that definitely like helps in like selling yourself.’ Through the CBM program, students reported an immediate sense of being taken seriously, now as a future worker, rather than as a fledgling college student.

While a business minor might more explicitly position students as workers, it does so in a way that A&S students interpret as ‘selling oneself’ as a key feature of one’s fitness as a worker. Such a discourse is reflective of the ‘professionalization’ of work where enterprising subjects discipline themselves in order to perform as workers. As participants explained how a business minor would make them more marketable, they spoke about performances of professionalism in the way their business minor functioned: (1) to practice discipline, (2) as a conversation starter, and (3) as a skill with broad applicability.

Discipline

When asked to describe the CBM program in her or his own words, nearly every participant began with the difficulty of completing the program. ‘It’s really freakin’ hard,’ Jamie, communication major, explained with a laugh, ‘like you’re giving up a summer and doing school work which isn’t like fun, but it’s worth it.’ History major Bob described the experience as ‘business boot camp. 10 weeks of fast paced, business basics. They covered everything; you do the business core in essentially 10 weeks.’ As participants talked about the challenging nature of the program, it became clear that the program itself served as a badge of honor for those who completed it. Double major in humanities and communication, Karen admitted, ‘I think just saying that I did that is like impressive to them and especially like saying I did it after my freshman year of college.’ Certainly, part of successfully completing the CBM program depends on one’s ability to complete the work, but the cost and time commitment are prohibitive for many students who might have otherwise qualified. In order to have a chance at proving one can cut it in the program, a student must first be able to afford the steep cost and commit 10 weeks where they aren’t earning money. If, however, a student can commit, the discipline required to complete the program became a skill or resource for participants to talk about.

The level of difficulty of the program became its own folklore of sorts, a performance in itself. Math major Melanie described the experience saying, ‘it’s like intensive. I know I said that word already. Very intensive. It’s a lot of work. And it’s not for the weak of heart.’ Jane recalled, ‘I would describe it as one of the most intense 10 weeks of my life, in which I learned things that I did not want to learn at times (laughs).’ Others seemed to share Jane’s ambivalence. Communication major Amber went back and forth with her feelings about the program: ‘it’s the worst thing … it’s the best thing … it’s the best thing that I’d never do again.’ Participants seemed happy knowing they could complete the program that challenged them in ways they had not otherwise been challenged. In many ways, (in addition to the difficult application process), the talk about the difficulty of the program added to its exclusivity.

Participants talked about the self-discipline involved in completing the program as a skill they learned, as important if not more than any specific business knowledge. Melanie spoke about the discipline required to complete the program:

It wasn’t fun. Let’s be honest. Fun? No. It wasn’t fun … but you kind of have to force yourself to keep a positive attitude because I know that if I didn’t I’d be in trouble. It’s a lot of self-discipline.

For Jamie, the difficulty of the program made her realize a level of self-discipline she did not know she had:

it was like wow I can stay up until like 6 am like consistently for like a few nights in a row if I really need to study. Like that’s an amazing thing that I didn’t know, like yay? [laughs].

This level of self-discipline and unwavering commitment is a hallmark of modern-day professionalism and central to a convincing work(er) performance. In a professional setting, self-discipline is assumed to yield productivity so much so that self-discipline becomes valuable in and of itself. Thus, our participants articulated that a key skill they gained from the CBM program was developing initiative and self-discipline, but before talking about the discipline they developed, they must first get in the door.

Conversation starter

The marketability participants perceived from having a business minor manifested itself, for many as a conversation starter or a way ‘in’ with potential future employers. Bob, explained, ‘that’s one of the first things people see on my resume so that’s always a great conversation starter in interviews.’ Kathy described the edge she felt she got from having a business minor: ‘when I was applying for internships this past summer like I definitely like talked about [CBM] and I do think that it was a strong point.’ In all, 14 of 20 participants mentioned that one of the greatest benefits of completing the CBM program was being able to add it to their resume. Jane explained, ‘I think having it on a piece of paper is probably the most meaningful part of it.’ Regardless of what skills or knowledge they may (or may not) have gained from the program, participants were aware of the power of this certification. Alex, a political science major, recognized the power of perceptions of the program:

Yeah, oh yeah. Like I love to tell people I have a business minor from one of the top 25 business institutes in America. And people hear that and get really excited and think it’s the best thing ever.

Looking back on her experience, Regina, a humanities major, felt her business minor gave her an edge in the job market: ‘I wish I had done it earlier in college because I think it opens up a lot of doors, that I didn’t know about.’ Several participants characterized the benefits of the CBM program as its ability to ‘open doors,’ including Alex, who explained, ‘having this background could open a lot of doors for you not because of any skills you have but because you a have title. You have this minor you can kind of show off.’ The business minor, whether seen on a resume or available as a topic of conversation, gave A&S students something to talk about or a way of starting a conversation with a potential employer.

Whether or not a business minor actually makes A&S students more desirable job candidates, it provides a readily available topic of conversation for students and potential employers. Amber recognized this leverage when she said, ‘I think people are more likely to want me compared to just a communication major and I think I’ve already seen that even just going to the career fair this year.’ Aaron concurred saying, ‘people always ask more about the business minor than the other two now,’ indicating that his business minor allowed him a space to talk about his studies in a way that his communication major and criminology minor did not. Michael, an economics major, echoed others’ sentiments, stating, ‘I think the CBM has marketed me better as a potential employee for employers, it’s a definite resume booster.’ Jane reasoned that although her participation in the CBM program lowered her Grade Point Average (GPA), ‘I’m satisfied with it because it got me a lot of interviews I wouldn’t have otherwise gotten.’ The business minor then acts as a conversation starter or way of ‘opening doors’ propelling A&S majors into a special category—especially at job fairs which often showcase more business jobs than those representing A&S majors. Whether or not students and professionals talk about any particular business knowledge, being able to identify as a business minor is a powerful resource that positions participants as having specialized training and expertise essential for performances of professionalism.

In the midst of their reinforcement of professionalism as a powerful performance of worker, however, participants also exhibited a keen awareness and explicit critique of this performance. Although she uses her business minor to position herself as a worker, Alex was also able to see how it is largely performative. She admitted,

I don’t see that I’m necessarily going to be really using the knowledge that I gained in CBM all of the time. I think I’m using my writing skills and my ability to communicate effectively more than anything else and I don’t think I learned any of that from CBM.

Amid their satisfaction in the ability to list a business minor on their resume, participants admitted skepticism about why the program has such power. Alex admitted, ‘It looks really great that I have this fake understanding of business. I have not personally benefitted in any other way. I mean in my understanding, but I like the title and I’ll reap the benefits of that.’ Jamie mirrored Alex’s thoughts, explaining,

I think the single most important thing is like not so much maybe what I personally got out of the program, but like the fact that I can put that program like down on a resume and like be able to like have a business minor.

For these A&S students, the importance of a business minor lies in the ability it provides students to present themselves in a particular way, rather than any specific skills he or she may have obtained. But it also allows them a place from which to critique the power of such a discourse, which may be an important step in recognizing the performativity required for professionalism.

Ubiquity/applicability of business

When asked their reason for getting a business minor, participants repeatedly referred to the ubiquity of business. ‘Everything you do is a business,’ Taylor stated, while communication major Stephanie reasoned, ‘[Business] just applies to everything.’ Aaron confidently argued, ‘business is involved in everything you do whether you like it or not. It is. It’s always there.’ Throughout their interviews, participants made reference to influence of business in situations they had experienced and its utility in nearly any situation. Noelle explained,

it’s not just in the business world that you’re going to need this information. So like if you’re applying for a job anywhere. Like if it’s an engineering job or a nursing interview or something like that or like a liberal arts internship, you’re going to need this information.

Although participants spoke to the broad applicability of business, none gave specifics about the particular skills or knowledge that might be drawn upon.

Instead, participants reported hearing from friends and family members that business knowledge could generally be applied to nearly all aspects of life. ‘[My parents] always said, ‘You are going to need business wherever you are in the world, it doesn’t matter what profession you end up going into … you’re going to need knowledge from the business world,’’ biology major Liz recalled. Beyond the presumed applicability of a business degree, participants conflated business skills with life skills. Jane articulated what several participants told us ‘it is applicable even just to everyday life. And realizing it’s not just business, it’s life skills. Ya know?’ Karen attributed her CBM with her growth and success in school: ‘it helps so many other things like … It helped me meet new people, like get a different perspective of [the university], and feel more comfortable here. And I know that was really helpful.’ The more participants spoke about the importance of business, the more broad its application seemed to get.

Aaron felt that after completing the CBM, he was able to engage more deeply in his life outside of school, by

hav[ing] conversations about what my parents are doing with their house … what’s happening on the news, if people get a divorce and have to split the big mansion property … I now have such a great base of understanding of business.

Later, Aaron returned to this idea, explaining how his business minor has even changed how he reads the paper:

For the longest time, I had no idea what they were talking about. I’d see the Wall St Journal and flip straight to where the cartoons were. I’d read the sports page … [now] I can have a conversation about ‘real stuff’ Before I was like, ‘What are the Eagles doing this weekend?’ Or like ‘what are the bars going to be like?’ Now it’s just like I can have a little bit mature of a conversation and still be fun at the same time.

The more participants spoke about the ubiquity of business to their lives, the further they got from referencing any specific business knowledge. Instead, participants referred to the ability to perform as a professional, to engage in conversations and carry oneself as a person of elite status. Although they attributed this performance to ‘business,’ what participants actually spoke of was professionalism. The business knowledge learned in the program is highly specialized, but the ability to perform as a professional in any setting has risen to a place of widespread recognition and importance for any occupation (Cheney and Ashcraft, 2007).

Initially, this discourse of ubiquity sounds like somewhat of a reverse of the division of labor that is central to notions of professionalism. How can business simultaneously be everywhere while also being characterized by highly specialized knowledge? But this conflation of business with everything, that our participants engage in, simply mirrors the ubiquity of discourses of professionalism to nearly every workplace, whether professional or not. Cheney and Ashcraft (2007) remind us that professionalism is nothing more than ‘a set of discursive and material processes’ that function to discipline workers to perform their work in particular ways (p. 153). Thus, in the same way that not everything is truly a business (e.g. a family or a classroom are not businesses), business logic and discourse have become a pervasive discourse of organizing—even in nonprofessional work (Medved and Kirby, 2005).

Participation in the CBM program as well as participants’ insistence on the marketability it grants them reinforces the power of professionalism in positioning workers. Of note, however, is the way participants not only drew on discourses of professionalism to demonstrate their own fitness as workers but also used these discourses to delegitimize jobs or career paths not characterized by professionalism. Regina states the reason she completed the CBM program in the first place was so ‘I would have something more real than just humanities … it’s not like you can just be a ‘humanitarian’’ (emphasis added). The comparison Regina makes between her humanities major and business minor calls forth the discourse of ‘realness’ and what counts as meaningful work (Clair, 1996). Aaron makes a similar move, explaining why his business minor was not a cause for celebration among his family: ‘it wasn’t more of like a ‘congratulations’ or excitement. It was more like ‘it’s about time you did something productive.’’ Aaron’s business minor is considered a productive use of time because of its perceived linear career path (or association with ‘real’ jobs), thus casting his communication major as not productive in positioning him as a worker.

Discussion and implications

Participants in our study overwhelmingly articulated the importance of a business minor for positioning themselves as future workers by performing discipline, opening doors, and capitalizing the broad applicability of business knowledge. These performances of professionalism, although articulated as the key to finding adequate employment, are but one (admittedly, very powerful) discourse for positioning individuals as workers. Below, we consider the implications of this conflation of a business minor with the performance of professionalism and how it shifts theory and practice regarding higher education as a site for occupation socialization and identification.

Most significantly, our data show the power of the performance of professionalism to render specialized knowledge insignificant. The credentials and selectness of a business minor create such a strong performance of expertise and exclusivity that actual business knowledge is assumed and rendered unnecessary. Participants claimed to have forgotten specific business knowledge, but were adamant about the importance of having a business minor for attracting and conversing with potential employers. As modern performances of professionalism increasingly rely on symbolic indicators of work(er), including face time (Williams, 2000) and bodily comportment (Trethewey, 1999), specialized knowledge is only of secondary importance. Workers are rewarded for the time they put in and their perceptions of busy-ness, in many cases above productivity and skill. For students in our study, having a business minor is more important for performing as a work(er) than one’s ability in accounting or finance. A modern performance of professionalism becomes a proxy for business (or perhaps other specialized) knowledge, and as the two are conflated, exclusivity and self-discipline become more important resources than the specific knowledge that makes it expert.

A discursive approach to occupational identity helps us to ‘understand and explore the ways in which the most mundane aspects of organizing … are the very ‘stuff’ of organization’ (Mumby and Mease, 2011: 283). Thus, a discursive approach moves attention away from occupational identity as a role and instead to understand occupational identities as discursive constructions that shift and change and imbue certain persons with power or lack thereof. From a discursive perspective, our focus is on how performances of occupational identity create and shape organizations and how organizing in such a way positions workers for success or failure. Reliance on symbolic indicators of success favors those who can best embody particular performances of worker—such as men for whom jobs have always and already been designed (Acker, 1990; Williams, 2000). Thus, for women, people of color, or members of other underrepresented groups, socialization into an occupational identity requires an additional step of learning first to perform as masculine, eliminating other aspects of their identities that mark them as different (Ashcraft et al., 2012).

The catch, however, is that even when ‘Others’ who have traditionally been excluded learn to perform a worker identity in a more normative (i.e. masculine) way, they are often penalized for breaking expectations of how they should be acting as women, or people of color (Babcock and Laschever, 2007). Professionalism, as a system, perpetuates systematic exclusion of groups of people. This exclusion is not only harmful to those excluded but also harms workers who succeed within the system by narrowly defining what counts as work in ways that are exclusive of other performances, such as being involved in the community or with family. Organizational policies are only representative of the discourses that constitute them and will thus be as narrow as the performances of professionalism on which they are based.

Much of the value students drew from the CBM program was symbolic; whether a line on a resume or a conversation starter, participants believe the performance of a business minor would make them more marketable as future workers. This emphasis on symbolic indicators of success as key performances of work(er) is theoretically important for extending notions of the ideal-worker norm (Drago, 2007; Williams, 2000) to young people who have not yet begun full-time work as adults. Until now, theories of the ideal-worker norm have only considered performances of adult workers. Our research empirically demonstrates young people’s performances of the ideal worker well in advance of their commitment or entrance into the full-time workforce. Such a finding further challenges stage models of organizational socialization that draw clear distinctions between efforts that are anticipatory of work and those that actually constitute work. Additionally, it highlights young people as an important and overlooked focus of organizational research that until recently has positioned youth as unimportant or inconsequential to organizational research and theory.

Practically speaking, our findings show the power of discourse to shape perceptions and behaviors, and the self-reinforcing nature of the discursive processes that constitute experience. Participants conflated business knowledge with professionalism, providing legitimacy and credibility to professionalism as a valued discourse constructing work. Students who enroll in the CBM program, and parents who encourage them, do so for the promise of expertise and exclusivity that come with a business degree. Ultimately, no matter what type of business knowledge students walk away with, they have earned the credentials that potential employers (and modern Western society) deem valuable. Thus, the demand for a business minor is a direct result of the value it is given by those who have the power to choose among candidates. Business knowledge is held in high regard because of the exclusivity and expertise that come with this specialized knowledge—all hallmarks of professionalism.

While the conflation of business knowledge with professionalism works in the favor of business schools to attract the attention of students and employers who proficiently perform professionalism, it represents a misunderstanding and misrepresentation of business knowledge. What is taught in business schools extends far beyond performances of professionalism and includes specialized knowledge unique to business curricula. When specific business skills are glossed over, or the value of a business education is valued only to the degree it prepares future workers to perform professionalism, the truly specialized knowledge that constitutes it as a field of study is rendered invisible and the value comes into question. Of course, this misrepresentation extends to A&S and higher education more generally. If specific fields of study are only valued for their ability to prepare students as professional workers, the specialized knowledge and unique skills that can only be learned through intensive focus in a field become invisible and forgotten, threatening to put business on the same trajectory as liberal arts and humanities degrees currently under fire. Finally, our findings pose another paradox of sorts for business schools (and academic departments more broadly), who must brand themselves as having exclusive and highly specialized knowledge—while touting the broad applicability of their degree. Ashcraft et al. (2012) note, ‘Successful exclusivity claims thus require ever more elaborate political acrobatics. Moreover, it is difficult to claim professional expertise through the exclusion of Others when you are simultaneously held accountable to include those very Others’ (p. 474). Business schools rely on their exclusivity as a hallmark of their program, and yet, increasingly, success is based on student paid tuition. Thus, a challenge for business schools and academic programs, more broadly, is to play a bit of a language game to create demand by defining its product as broadly applicable while generating a sort of exclusivity in who can claim that expertise.

Conclusion

A&S students’ accounts of their business minors demonstrate how particular discursive resources around work supply ‘a seemingly real story to tell [and] … constrains alternative explanations or narratives’ (Trethewey, 2001: 187), in this case the discourse of professionalism that has (d)evolved into symbolic measures of performance. A potential limitation of this work is its reliance on participants’ retrospective accounts of what occupational identity performances were valued by potential employers, without reports from employers themselves. Future research should consider potential differences between students who complete the CBM program and those who earn a traditional business major/minor during the academic year. Longer engagement with the curriculum may result in greater acumen with business specific knowledge that outweighs performances of professionalism. Scholars might also consider how responses might differ if investigators had been business students, rather than A&S students. One participant stated that our interview was the first time she had expressed any negative perceptions of the CBM program for fear of retribution.

Our findings show that the context of higher education provides an important space for critique of the existing discourse of professionalism as well as the telling of alternate narratives. Higher education is a place where students are exposed to new ideas and a variety of theories and perspectives that challenge and expand their thinking, all of which are clearly useful in dismantling the power of existing discourses and providing alternatives. A&S programs must do a better job of identifying for students the specific skills gained through a liberal arts education while helping students articulate those skills. There are other ways of engaging in work that might challenge professionalism and instead value aspects such as creativity and innovation or community engagement. Similarly, business schools might consider more explicitly addressing and critiquing the performances of professionalism that are central to a convincing performance of occupational identity. Students may still choose to perform professionalism, but they should recognize the consequences of such a performance and have resources for resisting and changing that discourse if they so chose.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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