People are involved in various works for livelihood. Involving in the different occupation people are trying to earn money. From the early stage of civilization, people are involved in the business to earn money for livelihood. But there arises a question. Is business a profession?
People think that doctor, engineer, lawyer earns money by giving services. So these are treated as the profession. People can earn money by business so it is treated as a profession. We should know which are a profession and its characteristics to compare with business.
Hodge and Johnson said, “Profession is a vocation requiring some significant body of knowledge that is applied with the high degree of consisting in the service of some relevant segment of society.”
Prof. Dalton E. McFarland identified some characteristics of the profession. These characteristics are given below:
- The existence of a body of special knowledge on technique.
- Formalized method of acquiring training and
- The establishment of a representative organization with professionalism as its goal.
- The formation of ethical codes for the guidance of conduct;
- The charging of fees based on service but with due regards for the priority of services over the desires for monetary reward.
From the analysis of the definitions and characteristics we get:
- Special knowledge is needed to be professional. But for businessman, it is not essential. Anybody can involve in business having basic knowledge.
- Professional need to acquire knowledge by training and experience. But in business, it is not necessary. Uneducated and inexperienced person can involve in
- To involve in any occupational organization is needed to be a member of the representative professional organization. But the persons who want to conduct business need not do these activities.
- People of any profession should follow the ethical codes for the guidance of conduct but the businessman has no certain ethical codes as the guidance of conduct.
- The main objective of the profession is to deliver service for livelihood. en the other hand through the business, we can earn money for the livelihood but the main objective of business is profit earning.
From the analysis of characteristics, we can say that all these characteristics of the profession are not in business. So business is not treated as the profession.
